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PROCEEDINGS 

OF THE 

ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 

IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 



Volume II] JULY, 1912 [Number 4 

ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 



PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY 
THE ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 

Columbia University 
1 1 6th Street and Broadway, New York 



Entered as second-class matter Nov. 21, IQIO, at the post office at New York N. V. 
under the Act of Congress, July id, 18Q4. 



Copyright, 1912, by the Academy of Political Science 

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PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 



The Proceedings are issued by the Academy as a record 
of its activities and as a means of giving detailed treatment to 
special subjects of importance. Each volume consists of four 
numbers, published in January, April, July and October. The 
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cussions and the addresses at the dinner meetings. 

The numbers of the first two volumes are as follows : 
Volume I (1910-1911) consists of four numbers: 
I. The Economic Position of Women 
II. The Reform of the Currency 

III. The Year Book of the Academy 

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Volume II (1911-1912) consists of four numbers : 

I. Capital and Labor Unified 
II. Business and the Public Welfare 

III. National Housing Association 

IV. Organization for Social Work 

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Volume II, Number 1, Capital and Labor Unified, by Wil- 
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CCIB258918 



PROCEEDINGS 

OF THE 

ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 

IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 

dV3 



796 

Volume II] JULY, 1912 [Number 4 



ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 



The Academy of Political Science 

Columbia University, New York 

1912 



Dw 



^^K- w^«u 






Copyright by 
The Academy of Political Science 






I 



4 



i 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I SOCIAL SURVEYS 

The Spread of the Survey Idea i 

Paul U. Kellogg 
A Social Survey of a Typical American City . 18 

Shelby M. Harrison 
A Sanitary and Health Survey . . . .32 

George T. Palmer 
The Relation of a Neighborhood Survey to 
Social Needs 51 

Miss Pauline Goldmark 
Statistical Methods in Survey Work . . .56 

Robert Emmet C haddock 
The Scope and Value of the Local Surveys of 
the Men and Religion Movement ... 63 

Orrin G. Cocks 

II NATIONAL SOCIAL NEEDS 

A Federal Commission on Industrial Relations — 
Why it is Needed 71 

John Bates Clark 
Labor Legislation a National Social Need . . 75 

Henry Rogers S eager 
Next Steps in the Child-Labor Campaign . . 80 

Owen R. Lovejoy 
Budgetary Provision for Social Needs . . 86 

William H. Allen 
An Interpretation of Vocational Guidance. . 92 

Miss Alice P. Barrows 
Labor of Women and Children in Tenements . 114 

Mrs. Florence Kelley 

Two National Social Needs 116 

Washington Gladden 
Recreation and Youth 118 

Luther H . Gulick 
Regulation of Public Amusements . . . .123 

Mrs. Belle Lindner Israels 
Commercialized Vice 127 

George J. Kneeland 
The Problem of Wayward Girls and Women De- 
linquents 130 

Miss Maude E. Miner 



iv CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Prevention of Cruelty to Children . .139 

C. C. Cars tens 
The Institutional Care of Children . . .146 

Hastings H. Hart 
The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. . .150 

W. 0. Still man 
Prison Labor 159 

E. Stagg Whitin 
The Extension of Organized Charity in the 
United States 164 

Francis H. McLean 
The Social Program of the Federal Council of 
the Churches of Christ in America . . .174 

Charles S. Macfarland 

III GREATER NEW YORK'S SOCIAL NEEDS 

City-Planning in New York City . . . . 1 80 

George B. Ford 
Housing Needs 188 

Lawrence Veiller 
The Protection of Factory Workers . . .191 

George M. Price 
The Education of Mothers and the Saving of 
Babies 195 

Philip Van Lngen 
The Protection and Distribution of Immigrants . 199 

Kate Holladay Claghorn 
Charitable Relief 207 

W. Frank Persons 
Social Work of the New York Schools . .211 

John Martin 

Cooperation of the Churches in Housing Reform. 2 1 5 
James Jenkins, Jr. 

IV RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS AND 
SOCIAL WORK 
Addresses at the Dinner of the Academy of 
Political Science 

Monsignor Joseph F. Mooney .217 
Rt. Rev. E. R. Hendrix . . .219 
Rabbi E. G. Hirsch 220 



Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell . .223 
Professor E. T. Devine. . . 226 
Mr. John R. Mott 228 



Proceedings of Spring Meeting .... 234 



THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA 1 

PAUL U. KELLOGG 
Director of the Pittsburgh Survey, 1907-09 

IN most of our social movements, we are under the necessity 
of starting something going. We must stir up interest as 
the first step. The survey movement, if we can call it that, 
does not seem to be handicapped in this way. There is more 
spontaneous outcropping of the survey idea the country round 
than as yet we have any sufficient organization or body of trained 
workers to deal with. Close on the heels of Pittsburgh came 
Buffalo. The pioneer work in the steel district was instigated 
by Charities Publication Committee and was carried out in 
cooperation with militant Pittsburghers, under grants from the 
Russell Sage Foundation. The study of the Polish section of 
Buffalo was the first undertaking of the sort instigated and 
financed by the city surveyed. Then we had that interesting 
state-wide tour of Kentucky by Mrs. Caroline Bartlett Crane, 
which was a quick sizing up of conditions in a group of smaller 
cities under the State Board of Health and the State Federation 
of Women's Clubs. We know of the series of community 
studies carried out by Mr. Aronovici in Rhode Island, and by Mr. 
St. John and Mr. Stelzle in Newark, Sag Harbor and elsewhere ; 
the studies of the Huntington Presbytery in seven counties in 
central Pennsylvania; the work of the Presbyterian Board in 
its rural surveys in Illinois, Missouri and Pennsylvania ; and 
the scores of neighborhoods, mill and mining towns which the 
Federal Immigration Commission caught up in their schedules. 
Last summer the Associated Charities of Syracuse, the Chamber 
of Commerce, the Central Trades Assembly and the Ministerial 
Association joined forces in the stock-taking of a single city 
which is described (p. 8) by Mr. Harrison; while the findings 
of the Lowell survey are just out in book form. Booth's Lon- 
don, Rowntree's York, the Hull-House Books and Papers, the 

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 1912 

(475) 



2 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

South End House Studies, Mr. Kirk's Providence, Dr. Roberts' 
Anthracite Coal Communities, the Washington number of Chari- 
ties and The Commons are instances, all of them, of social in- 
vestigations which have embodied many of the elements we find 
in the survey idea, but which are not identified with the more or 
less crystallized movement which to-day engages our attention. 
For I have before me four closely typewritten sheets, thor- 
oughly covered with the names of cities and organizations which 
are either embarked on surveys or are considering surveys, or 
would like to know more about them. The names of Minne- 
sota, Missouri, Texas and Kansas towns show the spread of the 
idea no less than those of the four chief cities of the British 
Northwest. One inquiry comes from India. 

Just at this juncture, the more immediate aspect of the move- 
ment presents itself in the fact that in nearly every city in which 
the Men and Religion Forward teams have set forth a social 
program, one of the planks in that program has been to recom- 
mend a social survey. So we are faced with the question : 
What is a survey, and how shall the residents of the average 
city go about one, with some prospect that they will be doing a 
craftsman's job of it? We know in a general way that a survey 
is something different from the ordinary operations of a mu- 
nicipal league or a charitable society or a settlement — different 
even from their campaigns for special reforms. We know also 
that it is different from newspaper work, or a civic exhibit, or 
an official report or scientific research as such ; although we 
may have an inkling that it partakes of all of these things, in 
one way or another. What then? What elements distinguish 
the survey? The papers by Mr. Harrison, Miss Goldmark and 
Dr. Palmer give concrete answers and give them with a preci- 
sion and taking quality which can scarcely be bettered by any 
generalizations. They tell, however, of three fairly well-defined 
types of survey ; and it will help in arriving at a working con- 
ception of the survey idea, to run over some of the elements 
common to all. 

And first, for purposes of comparison, let me set down the 

elements, five in number, which we felt at the close of the 

Pittsburgh Survey made that a distinctive enterprise. These 

methods were : 

(476) 



No. 4] THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA 3 

i. To bring a group of experts together to cooperate with 
local leaders in gauging the social needs of one city. 

2. To study these needs in relation to each other, to the 
whole area of the city, and to the civic responsibilities of de- 
mocracy. 

3. To consider at the same time both civic and industrial 
conditions, and to consider them for the most part in their 
bearings upon the wage-earning population. 

4. To reduce conditions to terms of household experience 
and human life. 

5. To devise graphic methods for making these findings 
challenging, clear and unmistakable. 

If I were recasting this formula to-day, I do not know that 
I should want to change it materially. But it will perhaps give 
a better approach to the survey movement to consider not what 
sets it off from other undertakings, but what it draws upon 
them for. 

First of all, the survey takes its unit of work from the sur- 
veyor. It has to do with a subject matter, to be sure, but that 
subject matter is subordinated to the idea of a definite geo- 
graphical area. It is quite possible to carry on a study of 
tuberculosis, for example, as a piece of physiological research, 
or as a piece of sociological research, wholly apart from where 
it occurs. But just as a geological survey is not geology in 
general, but the geology of a given mountain range or water 
shed, so, even when a special subject matter is under study, 
the sociological survey adds an element of locality, of neighbor- 
hood or city, state or region, to what would otherwise pass 
under the general term of an investigation. 

And when the subject matter is not specialized, but concerns 
the more intangible " needs " of a community, the survey be- 
comes necessarily different things in different localities. It can- 
not be thought out at a far-away desk. It is responsive to local 
conditions; in a worn-out country district, suffering from what 
Professor Ross calls " folk-depletion," its content has little in 
common with that of a survey in a textile center, tense with 
human activity, and dominated by its terms of work. 

In the second place, the survey takes from the physician his 
art of applying to the problems at hand standards and experi- 

(477) 



4 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

ence worked out elsewhere. To illustrate, if your pure scientist 
were studying the housing situation in a given town, he would 
start out perhaps without any hypotheses, tabulate every salient 
fact as to every house, cast up long columns of figures, and 
make careful deductions, which might and might not be worth 
the paper they were written on. Your housing reformer and 
your surveyor ought to know at the start what good ventilation 
is, and what cellar dwellings are. These things have been 
studied elsewhere, just as the medical profession has been study- 
ing hearts and lungs until they know the signals which tell 
whether a man's organs are working right or not, and what 
to look for in making a diagnosis. 

In the third place, the survey takes from the engineer his 
working conception of the structural relation of things. There 
is a building element in surveys. When we look at a house, we 
know that carpenters have had a good deal to do with it, and 
it is possible to investigate just what the carpenters have done ; 
also the bricklayers, the steam-fitters and the rest of the build- 
ing trades. But your engineer, like your general contractor 
and architect, has to do with the work of each of these crafts in 
its relation to the work of every other. So it is with a survey, 
whether it deals with the major elements entering into a given 
community which has structural parts of a given master 
problem such as Dr. Palmer describes in his survey of the sani- 
tary conditions in Springfield. Only recently I received a letter 
from a man engaged in making a general social survey of a 
manufacturing town — a so-called survey. He did not think that 
it was truly a survey, nor did I, because out of the scope of 
that investigation had been left all of the labor conditions in the 
mills. The local committee had been fearful of raising opposi- 
tion in forceful quarters. Yet these labor conditions were basic 
in the town's life ; on them, for better or worse, hung much of 
the community welfare; and by ignoring them, the committee 
could deal with partial solutions only. It was as if a diagnos- 
tician in making his examination had left a patient's stomach 
out of consideration because the patient was a dyspeptic and 
irritable. They had violated the structural integrity of their 
survey. 

(478) 



No. 4] THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA 5 

In the fourth place, the survey takes from the charity-organi- 
zation movement its case-work method of bringing problems 
down to human terms. Death rates exemplify human units in 
their barest essentials; but I have in mind a more developed 
unit. Let me illustrate from the Pittsburgh Survey in the pains- 
taking figures we gathered of the household cost of sickness — 
lost wages, doctor's bills, medicines, ice, hospitals, funerals, the 
aftermath of an epidemic in lowered vitality and lowered earn- 
ings, household by household — not in sweeping generalizations 
but in what Mr. Woods called " piled-up actualities." If I were 
to set one touchstone, more than another, to differentiate the 
true survey from social prospecting, it would be this case-work 
method. In employing it the surveyor, because of lack of 
means and time, must often deal with samples rather than with 
the whole population coming within the scope of his study. 
These samples may be groups of school children ; or the people 
who die in a certain year; or those who live in a certain ward. 
The method is one, of course, which is scientifically justifiable 
only so long as those who employ it can defend their choice of 
the sample chosen, and show where it does and does not repre- 
sent the entire group. 

Under this head it is to be noted that the survey is in a field 
friendly to what we have come to call municipal research. The 
latter is indebted for its methods of unit-costs and efficiency to 
the accountants. These methods may be applied to city bud- 
gets and city departments as an integral part of a social sur- 
vey, the distinction between the two movements in practise 
being perhaps that the one is focused primarily on governmental 
operations ; the other on phenomena imbedded in the common 
life of the people. 

In the fifth place, the survey takes from the journalist the 
idea of graphic portrayal, which begins with such familiar tools 
of the surveyor as maps and charts and diagrams, and reaches 
far through a scale in which photographs and enlargements, 
drawings, casts and three-dimension exhibits exploit all that the 
psychologists have to tell us of the advantages which the eye 
holds over the ear as a means for communication. With these 
the survey links a sturdy effort to make its findings have less in 

(479) 



6 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

common with the boredom of official reports than with the 
more engaging qualities of newspaper " copy " — especially 
that simplicity of structure, tangible framework, and readability 
which American magazine men have developed as their tech- 
nique in writing for a democracy. This is not a counsel, bear 
in mind, of flimsy sensationalism ; although those who have 
matters to conceal seek to confuse the two. A startling article 
patched up from a few glints of fact is a very different proposi- 
tion from a crystal set in a matrix of tested information. 

Underlying this factor of graphic portrayal is the factor of 
truth ; truth plus publicity. It is often possible to work out 
large and definite reforms internally, by getting a group of 
forceful men around a table and convincing them that so and 
so is the right thing to do. This is, I take it, a legitimate 
method of philanthropic work and of social reform. But it is 
not the method of a survey. The survey's method is one of 
publicity ; it is another and separate implement for social ad- 
vance, and its usefulness should not be negatived by a failure 
to hold to its distinctive function. The philosophy of the survey 
is to set forth before the community all the facts that bear on 
a problem, and to rely upon the common understanding, the 
common forethought, the common purpose of all the people as 
the first great resource to be drawn upon in working that prob- 
lem out. Thus conceived, the survey becomes a distinctive 
and powerful implement of democracy. 

With these five working principles in mind, how can the sur- 
vey idea be applied to the average community, how and on 
what scale should its working scheme be launched ? Here there 
is already some experience upon which to draw. At one ex- 
treme we have a superficial skimming of facts — what we call in 
the Middle West a lick-and-a-promise. Perhaps it is limited to 
passing round and filling out schedules devised to fit any city — 
such as were used in many places in advance of the Men and 
Religion campaign week. These were not without value in 
throwing some facts of community life into relief and in show- 
ing where released energies might at once be applied ; but 
the team leaders very properly did not call them surveys, mak- 
ing them rather a basis for recommending the larger work. 

(480) 



No. 4] THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA y 

They bear about the same relation to a survey that the blanks 
which a mail-order tailoring establishment sends out for self- 
measurement bear to a thorough-going physical examination. 

At the other end of the scale we have the sort of a survey 
which the Pittsburg Survey, if we regard it as an experiment, 
demonstrated can with staff and resources some day be made in 
one of our first-class cities. The Pittsburgh Survey made a 
quick diagnosis of perhaps twenty phases of life and labor in 
the steel district on the basis of standards worked out else- 
where ; it brought these diagnoses together and studied some- 
thing of the structural relation of the problems set forth ; but it 
sank shafts of definite, consistent, active investigation in but five 
or six fields and even there rigorous limitations had to be set 
to the scope of the work. For example, we studied, case by 
case, 500 families to see how they actually made shift when the 
bread-winner was killed at his day's work. The super-survey 
would not only gauge the chief factors entering into a com- 
munity, gauge also their fabrication into its general working 
scheme ; but would study the human bearings of every factor, 
as searchingly as we studied the economic reaction of these 
industrial accidents. 

Not a few of the elements in such a survey will ultimately be 
carried out as part of the routine work of our governmental, in- 
stitutional and industrial organizations. This was illustrated in 
the recommendation made by a stockholders' committee at the 
recent meeting of the United States Steel Corporation. The 
work which the Pittsburgh Survey put into gathering elementary 
facts as to hours, wages and other labor conditions in the Pitts- 
burgh district exhausted a very considerable share of our funds 
and energy. This stockholders' committee held that in the 
same way that their corporation had taken the lead in publish- 
ing extensive reports on its financial operations and output, it 
should be its policy in the future to lay before stockholders 
and public the general facts as to labor conditions in their mills. 
That, it seemed to me, was well-nigh revolutionary. Similarly 
many of our city and state departments — health, labor, finance 
and education — are putting out more and more as part of their 
legitimate routine the salient facts upon which public opinion 
can formulate working judgments. 

(430 



8 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

If this were done generally, the survey, to my mind, would 
still be an opportune instrument for social advance ; — on its 
civic side, in enabling us to see whether or not there are great 
gaps in the frontage with which a community faces the future, 
and on its scientific side, in measuring the human reaction of 
various institutions, agencies and measures, which are carried 
forward in the name of progress and which should be tested 
and checked up from time to time. 

But what we can discuss most profitably here is the sort of 
undertaking which as things stand to-day a community, ranging 
anywhere from ten thousand to half a million, can take up, — 
neither a skimping survey that does not get beneath the sur- 
face, nor the comprehensive interlocking survey just outlined 
which must needs require a large staff and resources. What 
are we to recommend when a group of progressive people in 
such a community come forward and say they want to start a 
survey — a group with only general notions as to the things 
most seriously in need of inquiry in their locality, and with 
slender funds which may grow only as the undertaking shows its 
usefulness ? Two lines of action seem most promising. 

The first of these is to recommend that they secure a man of 
all-around experience in social work to come to their com- 
munity for a quick sizing up of things — a report which will 
enable them to see where the land lies — and either base a 
general social survey upon this report, or follow up intensively 
one or more of the principal " leads " disclosed. 

The second possible line of action is to start out with some 
unit less than the general social problem of their city, with the 
idea that work less spread-out and more exact will in the long run 
lead farther. There are several ways in which this can be done. 
One method is to take a given neighborhood, in the way that 
the Buffalo survey took its Polish district. This method has 
the advantage of focusing attention on a manageable area, 
where definite results (like the Buffalo playgrounds and evening 
schools for immigrants) can be reached while the survey is in 
process. It has the disadvantage that it may tend to confirm 
the impressions of squalor already held by polite residents of a 
city as to some particular neighborhood, without forcing in 

(482) 



No. 4] THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA 9 

upon them the fact that a community is like a human being 
and none of its members can be sick without being a drag on 
the whole ; without rousing the whole city to action, or even, 
as in Buffalo, leading up to a general city survey. A modifica- 
tion of this method was discussed in New Haven — the sugges- 
tion being to take a belt running through the town, so as to be 
representative of good and bad conditions alike, the well-to-do, 
the middling-to-do, and the poor. This plan has imaginative 
values, a practical obstacle perhaps being the difficulty in fitting 
existing sources of statistics to such a philanthropic gerry- 
mander. Another method is to take a block and study its peo- 
ple intensively in the matter of their social needs and the re- 
sources of the city with respect to them, in much the same way 
as (from the standpoint of racial composition and social mind) 
Dr. Jones and Prof. Woolston have studied given New York 
city blocks. Such a method would unquestionably supply an 
exceptional group of citizens with rare insight as to the actual 
operations and values of much of our social work. With this 
insight they could reach judgments and execute reforms, but the 
plan would scarcely usher in that self-consciousness which comes 
when a whole community sees itself in the large, and which, to 
my mind, gives the community survey its exceptional dynamic 
force. 

In contrast to these methods, which consider fairly small areas 
in their relation to a wide range of social needs, another partial 
method is to take some one social problem and study it in its 
bearings on the entire community — such a problem as recrea- 
tion. This would cover not only a study of playgrounds and 
play opportunities, but an examination of the city play bill 
(nickleodeons, skating rinks, cheap shows, dance halls) as was 
made by the Kansas City Board of Public Welfare, to see how 
much fun was costing the people, how they could spend less and 
get more, and how far commercialized amusements should be 
supervised. It would cover the larger uses of school houses, 
substitutes for saloons, the utilization of outdoors, and the nat- 
ural resources of wood and valley back from a city ; the extent 
of leisure and the social effects of its compression through over- 
work and Sunday labor; the money surplus for recreation in 
household budgets ; and so on. 

(483) 



10 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

While local conditions, the agencies interested, the public 
temper and the money available are considerations which must 
be duly reckoned with, my feeling is that the first line of 
approach described is the one which will serve most cities best ; 
— that is, the quick sizing-up process to see how the land lies 
and to plant what the civil engineers call " bench marks " at points 
of vantage. For this work can be done on a scale to fit any 
town's pocket-book, it embodies in a rudimentary way the ele- 
ments which we have seen are the essential methods of a survey, 
and it gives perspective. The scientific farmer who has his 
soils examined in taking up new land, the business man who is 
used to inventories as a basis of planning for the year ahead, 
the physician who is called on less frequently to doctor fevers 
and set bones than to overhaul patients who are " all run down," 
will not need to have the value of such a piece of preliminary 
stock-taking argued out with them. A town with ten thousand 
people can get a man with what you might call a general prac- 
titioner's equipment in social work to spend half a week there 
with fair prospect that his report will be something on which 
they can build. Superficial though it would frankly be, it should 
bring the more easily recognizable needs and opportunities in 
the town's life to the test of standards worked out elsewhere — 
which, as we have seen, is one of the first and easiest tasks of a 
survey. It could scarcely fail to show how health hangs on 
civic enterprise and in kindred ways make average citizens see 
that things which they may have regarded as unrelated are bound 
up in each other. It would correspondingly show these things in 
proportion. The sky-scraping pride with which a growing town 
points to an atrocious six or ten-story block on its chief corner 
is not energy any more misapplied than many a philanthropic 
enterprise, bred to suit city conditions, which the small town 
swallows hoofs, hide and all. Such a report would gather up, 
if rightly made, the progressive ideas held by local people who 
have seen farther ahead than their neighbors ; and it would have 
the force — and that counts for a good deal in a growing com- 
munity — of being heralded as the judgment of a " city expert," 
thereby gaining a hearing for things which local prophets may 
have despaired of. Further, such a report, if it sets a vision of 

(484) 



No. 4] THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA 1 1 

what the town might be, tugs at the imagination of the people 
and loosens energies in many directions. The same things hold 
true for a larger city — the city of twenty-five to fifty thousand 
which can employ such a preliminary prospector for from a 
fortnight to six weeks ; or the still larger city which can engage 
for this sizing-up process a man of experience and all-round 
equipment with two or three assistants, for a six months com- 
mission. Its alternative would be to get experts in half a dozen 
of the major fields of social concern to come on the ground for 
say a fortnight each, relying upon a local committee to synthe- 
size these special reports into a general scheme of procedure. 
The Syracuse survey illustrated these two methods somewhat in 
combination, for Mr. Harrison spent six weeks in his general 
work, and various national and local bodies were successfully 
appealed to to carry on the field work along special lines. 

Such a preliminary report once in hand, the community small 
or large is in much more favorable position than at the start to 
make constructive decisions. It may decide to carry on any one of 
the inquiries which I enumerated earlier as possible lines of action, 
only with far larger chance of their being done intelligently and 
with prospect of results for the whole city. It may do what 
Rochester is doing — that is, what might be called a consecutive 
survey, organizing and calling on experts to take up first one 
phase of social concern and then another. This is the sort of 
work done by the Pittsburgh Civic Commission. It may focus 
its efforts on some district, and there sink its inquiries into the 
structure of the common life. This the Bureau of Social Re- 
search under Miss Goldmark has done on a district scale on the 
upper west side of New York, scrutinizing in a given neighbor- 
hood how courts and charitable agencies, the departments of 
health and education come in contact with the life of the peo- 
ple — how they may be turned from impersonal machines to in- 
timate agencies within reach of the average family. The com- 
munity may focus its attention, on the other hand, on the 
coordination of governmental activities and by means of mu- 
nicipal research, budget exhibits and the like, make the public 
business take on new efficiency and new meaning. 

But for cities of from 25,000 to 250,000 population, the 

(485) 



12 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

simple and natural and, I believe, most promising result of the 
preliminary survey, would be a systematic community survey 
growing out of it, one with sufficient staff, sufficient time and 
sufficient expenditures to make a thorough-going inventory of 
the life and labor of the place, to seek out the wastes in its eco- 
nomic and vital resources, to captivate and give constructive 
content to its evanescent and often sorely exploited enthusiasms, 
and to lay a sure foundation of information on which to plan 
and build for ten years ahead. 

The scale on which such a permanent survey — and by per- 
manent I of course do not mean a perennial enterprise, but one 
enduring in the foundation it lays — should be undertaken, would 
depend on the size and public spirit of the community. But 
the survey movement has reached a point where we can say 
with some degree of precision — as I have undertaken to do 
earlier in this paper — what are the essential methods which 
should enter into its work, and where we can say, with some de- 
gree of conviction, that such a working scheme will have prac- 
tical and far-reaching results. 

Right here, it may be well to interpolate two points as to the 
civic investment which a community puts into a survey. No 
town should be balked at launching one, under the impression 
that it is a contraption suited only to a large city, or one 
which only a great philanthropic foundation can afford. I have 
indicated how a small town can make a start at modest expense ; 
and Dr. Palmer describes the wide range of sanitary investiga- 
tions which he carried out as commissioner of public health of 
Springfield, Illinois, in cooperation with local people and at 
almost no extra cost to the city. With a superintendent of 
schools as far-sighted and resourceful as this health commis- 
sioner, a judge who would look at jails, police and legal pro- 
cesses with what the Wisconsin supreme court calls twentieth- 
century eyes, an engineer with ingenuity and vision, and with 
other volunteers and officials of like caliber, men with social 
viewpoint and with some acquaintance with other cities, men 
giving their leisure and to some extent their working hours to 
the plan, you would have a local staff for a rounded community 
survey. They could carry it out as a piece of good citizenship 

(486) 



No. 4] THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA 1 3 

on a level which would command national attention and respect, 
and which would set a new gauge for civic patriotism. On the 
other hand, consider a city with say a cigar-store keeper as 
health commissioner, without any health reports, and with acrid 
resistance on the part of the dominant political machine to any 
probing of its health service. The process of surveying in such 
a backward city is a very different matter ; so also is the cost of 
bringing onto the ground a sanitarian of Dr. Palmer's breadth 
of outlook, gained from his work in the state and city public 
health service ; and then keeping him there long enough to get 
a thorough grasp of the sanitary situation, and to gather data 
sufficient to carry the town with him. 

And here we are close to the fact that while many of the 
more obvious social conditions can be brought to light by lay- 
men, the reach of social surveying depends on those qualities 
which we associate with the expert in every profession ; knowl- 
edge of the why of sanitary technique, for example, and of the 
how by which other cities have wrought out this reform and 
that. And townsmen who would think nothing of paying the 
county engineer a sizable fee to run a line for a fence bound- 
ary must be educated up to the point where they will see the 
economy of investing in trained service in social and civic up- 
building. Unscientific acquaintance with what other cities are 
doing may lead only to duplicating their mistakes ; untraveled 
advice may, on the other hand, lead only to finding out slowly 
and at bitter cost what has elsewhere been demonstrated. 
Ignorance of the facts that lie concealed in an unresolved mass 
of local statistics is only less costly, humanly speaking, than the 
too ready acceptance of notions which hearty but ignorant 
handling can shake out of the same statistics. 

My second point as to the civic investment in a survey is that 
it pays not only for a city to get at its underlying facts but to 
get those facts out into the open. There is no older subterfuge 
than to beat the drums of local pride and charge that the 
leaders who are overhauling bad conditions are injuring the fair 
name of a city. This charge finds customary expression in the 
rumor that manufacturing enterprises will keep away if they 
learn that the schools are poor, the council is full of graft, or 

(487) 



I 4 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

the water is infected ; and that one who advertises these 
things by rousing the public to reform is the town traitor. Yet 
the city of the Southwest that, as a gala day approached, put 
up a high board fence so that you could not see the shacks that 
at one point lined its principal thoroughfare, may have fooled the 
distinguished visitor who was driven past, but it could not fool 
the manufacturer who is looking for a new site ; still less — and 
this is equally important from the standpoint of local interests 
— could it fool intelligent workmen who are looking for a town 
in which to bring up their families. I have known of an enter- 
prise that refused to settle in a city because it would not bribe 
the aldermen for a side track (perhaps the first of a long series 
of petty hold-ups) and of another that refused to settle where 
skilled mechanics could not find the sort of living conditions 
and recreation they were accustomed to. It could not get 
its men to come along. When such decisions hang in the 
balance I fancy one factor that counts in Worcester's favor is 
the fight of its manufacturers against tuberculosis, in Pittsburgh's 
favor is the great filtration plant with which the city has downed 
typhoid, in Cleveland's favor is the civic campaigns of its 
Chamber of Commerce. All these things stand for enterprise. 
They are upbuilding of the sort which means first of all getting 
down to bed rock ; and that is the sort of investment which a 
city puts into a survey. 

Convinced as I am, however, that a survey is " good busi- 
ness " in the long run from the standpoint of a city's prosperity, 
it has a broader appeal. It is one of the channels open to the 
aroused social conscience of our generation. In the govern- 
mental field we have two strong movements — one towards 
greater efficiency ; the other towards greater democracy. The 
first is reflected nationally by the President's Commission on 
Efficiency and Economy; the second finds expression in the 
Western insurgent movement which through the initiative, 
referendum and recall, seeks to bring the legislative " say " 
back to the people. If we were to personify the first move- 
ment, it would be to give it the character of the expert ; the 
second, the character of the average citizen. And in the gen- 
eral trend, we have the expert and the average man coming to- 

(488) 



No. 4] THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA 1 5 

gether : and jointly challenging the frontage which existing in- 
stitutions, professions and organized forces bear toward the 
needs of the times. 

They challenge the church, the school, the city council, 
the court, the mill, in the name of the mighty industrial 
changes which have put new strains on old institutions ; in the 
name of science, which has opened new possibilities and new 
hopes ; and in the name of the common welfare which is strik- 
ing a fairer balance between property and life. 

For many existing conditions we have only ourselves to 
blame ; but in changing them, we have to overcome the re- 
sistance of those whose scheme of service to the community 
has grown up with the old conditions. Dr. Palmer illustrates 
this in what he says of the milk supply. Let us look at the 
milkman as a factor in the community life — an institution if you 
will. In the past we may have officially asked of him a certain 
grade of butter-fat in his milk, but that is a dairyman's standard, 
worked out in the cheese and butter trade. We have demanded 
a collar of cream as a sign of richness — the uninformed milk- 
drinker's notion of protecting himself against watered milk. 
But we are only beginning to demand what the dietitians and 
physicians are showing us is more important than either of 
these, namely, clean milk — clean milk, rendered more difficult 
to obtain by the very dirt and congestion of our new urban con- 
ditions ; rendered vital by the laboratory discoveries of the last 
twenty years in bacterial diseases ; rendered possible by our 
advances in methods of sterilization ; rendered an issue among 
the people at large, by the demonstrable effect of dirty milk 
upon the health of thousands of babies — a human test, this last, 
such as enables the average mother and the expert sanitarian 
to join forces in a campaign to clean up stables and milk routes, 
and to put an end to dirty cans and tuberculous cows. I need 
not show how through all this runs the three-fold challenge in 
the name of mighty industrial changes, of scientific advance and 
of the common welfare. 

That challenge is one repeated over and over again in the 
fields of social concern. It does not require a very wide stretch 
of the imagination to apply the same analysis to the Titanic 

(489) 



1 6 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

disaster. Compare the commercial demand for speed and 
capacity in ocean liners with the commercial demand for butter 
fat. Compare the blind popular demand for luxuries in cabins 
with the blind popular demand for a thick collar of cream. 
Life boats are like clean milk. Safety is a human rather 
than a commercial standard. Some naval experts have been 
preaching it for years, but their judgments have fallen on deaf 
ears. Now the average man at last sees ; and (in high rage) he 
is calling for a change. Those responsible for ocean vessels 
are charged to make safety keep pace with the great structural 
changes in the shipping industry ; to apply science to human 
well-being, as well as to speed. 

In many of these deep-seated social needs, apparently some 
great disaster has to overtake us, and smite us, before as a peo- 
ple we are aroused to them, and half-blindly, often wholly un- 
thinking of our own responsibility, demand immediate reform. 
This is so whether it is a dam which gives way like Austin ; or 
a theatre which burns like the Iroquois ; or a blazing school- 
house full of children like that at Cleveland; or a loft building 
like the Triangle. Coupled with this very human tendency is 
another, equally human. For while it takes one of these great 
disasters to drive the lesson home, we are faced with the fact 
that the feeling of exasperation and purpose, the " conscience- 
smittenness" of the community, more often than not fritters 
away before it accomplishes anything. Thus a year has already 
elapsed since the lives of 146 working people were snuffed out 
in the Triangle disaster in New York, and while public indig- 
nation has vented itself in mass meetings and safety com- 
mittees, in investigating commissions and fire bills, there has 
been no action within the intervening twelve months which 
would thoroughly prevent the recurrence of such a panic fire 
and no sure provision which would get the people out, any more 
than the Titanic's meager life-boat equipment was enough to 
float the two cabins, the crew and the steerage, when the great 
boat sank. Had a modern shipload of passengers in New York 
harbor ever gone through the motions of getting into the 
life boats and away, the safety equipment of our ocean liners 
would have been put to a human test. That test would have 

(490) 



No. 4] THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA 1 7 

borne out what the naval experts had been saying, and would 
have demonstrated it so thrillingly that not only the people who 
were left behind on deck would have seen their own helpless- 
ness, but average citizens everywhere would have been alive 
to what safety means in ocean travel. 

To visualize needs which are not so spectacular but are no 
less real, is the work of the survey — to bring them to human 
terms, to put the operations of the government, of social insti- 
tutions and of industrial establishments to the test of individual 
lives, to bring the knowledge and inventions of scientists and 
experts home to the common imagination, and to gain for their 
proposals the dynamic backing of a convinced democracy. 

The survey cannot count upon a catastrophe to point its 
morals. The public interest it creates comes harder but has 
better staying qualities. In so far as it must lay a framework 
for setting forth the wide range of needs and opportunities 
which fall within its field, so it has inherent the prospect of 
a more sustained and organic accomplishment. 

(49i) 



A SOCIAL SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY 1 

SHELBY M. HARRISON 
Director of the Syracuse Social Survey 

JUST as cities or communities differ, so will city or commu- 
nity surveys be different. Any set method for this kind 
of inventory-taking, intended for general application, must 
after all be largely suggestive, leaving wide latitude for shifting 
the emphasis according as conditions vary from city to city. 
Not with the thought, therefore, that the recent preliminary 
social survey of the city of Syracuse, New York, presents an 
inclusive plan for city surveying nor that it is a sample of what 
a full-fledged city survey ought to be ; but, rather, that it may 
carry some suggestion for organizing and defining a city survey 
and be an illustrative instance of what one city did toward secur- 
ing a program of " next-steps " in its civic and social develop- 
ment, that undertaking is recounted. 

About a year ago several citizens of Syracuse, among them 
Rev. Murray S. Howland and Paul E. Illman, became convinced 
that the rapid growth of the city in the last decade, with its con- 
sequent changes in social relationships, had brought new prob- 
lems calling for new diagnosis and treatment, and that the time 
had come for at least a preliminary stock-taking of local con- 
ditions affecting the life, health and progress of the city's 1 50,000 
people. This purpose became specific along at least two lines : 
first, to gather sufficient data on points which seemed to call for 
immediate action so that definite constructive recommendations 
could be made ; and second, to make a sufficient diagnosis of 
general conditions so as to determine whether and along what 
lines a later, more intensive survey should be carried on. 

In order to give the enterprise strong and wide local backing, 
the support of the four large organizations in the city which 
themselves were federations of other organizations was sought 
and secured, namely, the Ministerial Association, which includes 

*Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 191 2. 

(492) 



SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY 



19 



something over a hundred churches; the Chamber of Com- 
merce, which represents employers and industrial and com- 
mercial organizations ; the Central Trades Assembly, which 
represents all the labor unions of the city ; and the Associated 
Charities, which represents to some extent the relief agencies. 
The Chamber of Commerce subscribed two-fifths of the esti- 
mated expenses of the survey, and each of the other three 
organizations guaranteed one-fifth. Each organization chose 
three representatives on a central survey committee of twelve, 
and gave the committee full power to go ahead with the survey. 
The committee included some of the most influential men in the 
city. Representing, as it did, forces that are not always in 
accord in city life, the committee developed into a very remark- 
able working group — so remarkable, in fact, that people outside 
the group were unwilling to see it broken up after it had com- 
pleted the immediate work to which it was committed. 

A director from outside the city was secured to carry the 
social inventory as far as seemed practicable in five weeks ; and 
several sub-committees were appointed to gather general in- 
formation which would be of use to the investigators — including 
city and county reports for a number of years back ; special 
reports published by the chamber of commerce, the board of 
education, the academy of medicine and other organizations ; 
population figures ; maps ; city ordinances ; and so on. The 
director spent most of his first week in company with some 
member or members of the central committee, interviewing 
city officials, business men, labor leaders, clergymen, teachers, 
social workers, physicians and others familiar with social con- 
ditions. The purpose of the interviews was to become saturated 
with the main facts of the community, especially those which 
indicated, from many points of view, improvements made in the 
last ten or fifteen years, and improvements also from many 
points of view that were thought to be needed in the next few 
years ahead. With these facts digested the central committee 
picked out the main lines of inquiry to be followed. They 
were, in broad terms : 

1. Health conservation and sanitation. 

2. Housing conditions among unskilled workers. 

(493) 



20 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

3. The betterment agencies of the city. 

4. Foreign populations. 

5. Juvenile delinquency. 

6. Civic improvement. 

7. Labor conditions. 

Certain phases of municipal accounting, public finance and 
local taxation, would have been included in the survey, but for 
the fact that one member of the central committee had already 
set on foot plans for handling such an investigation in another 
way. This investigation has since been made by experts from 
the New York Bureau of Municipal Research ; and interest in it 
had undoubtedly been enhanced by the social and civic revival 
which citizens are free to credit as one of the results of the 
social survey. 

All of these subjects chosen presented phases of such current 
importance that the committee wished them followed further; 
yet it was evident that each subject, to be covered adequately, 
would require the investigator's time for more than the remain- 
ing four weeks. A request was therefore made to several state 
and national organizations, which sooner or later would be con- 
ducting investigations of their own in Syracuse, to send their 
representatives at once. They would thus cooperate with the 
survey, and on the other hand they would gain for their own 
work through the strong local backing afforded in the central 
survey committee. A number of organizations responded im- 
mediately, among them the New York Child Labor Committee, 
the North American Civic JLeague for Immigrants, the National 
Housing Association, the National Consumers' League and the 
National Prison Labor Committee. In addition to this outside 
cooperation a score of Syracuse people volunteered their services 
as a personal contribution to the survey — among them a young 
physician, who made the study of the city's vital statistics; a 
young rabbi, who prepared a statement of playground equip- 
ment and needs ; the secretary of the associated charities, who 
took charge of the housing investigation ; an official of the city 
sewerage commission, who prepared a summary of the sewerage 
situation; the probation officers, who studied juvenile delin- 
quency ; a young lawyer, who gathered data on relief work in the 

(494) 



No. 4] SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY 2 I 

city ; students in a sociology class in the university, who aided 
in the investigation of child labor in the street trades; and 
others who made maps and charts, arranged exhibits, offered 
prizes or acted as judges. The liberal cooperation of the news- 
papers was invaluable. 

A work-program indicating data to be gathered on each 
major subject was worked out by the different investigators and 
the survey director; and the latter spent the remainder of his 
time investigating several phases of labor conditions. As 
already indicated, the reports were not expected to be analyses 
of many or all sides of the subjects inquired into ; they were to 
take up only those matters which seemed to call for immediate 
action or which pointed the need for more extended study. 
The outlines of facts to be looked for, however, covered a range 
wide enough to allow the different investigators some degree of 
latitude in deciding, as they got deeper into the fact-gathering, 
what matters should be given special scrutiny. Several of the 
work-programs follow : 

A. Health and its Conservation 

I. Vital statistics 

a. General death rates for 1 907-08-09-1 o-i I ; and average 
death rates for five-year periods running back twenty years ; 
infant death rates, same period. 

b. Distribution of deaths by wards, for 1910. 

c. Population by age and sex in each ward, in 19 10. 

d. Deaths from the more prevalent diseases for the last ten 
years, especially contagious and preventable diseases such as 
typhoid, tuberculosis, diarrhea and enteritis (under one and 
under five years of age), and pneumonia. 

e. Case rates of the diseases more prevalent locally for the 
last ten years — especially contagious and preventable diseases, 
such as diphtheria, typhoid, measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis. 

f . Births : reporting of ; still births ; birth rates compared 
with other cities of similar size and population make-up. 

II. Health administration 

a. Effect of administering health work through a subordinate 

(495) 



22 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

bureau of the department of public safety, instead of through a 
department of health ; adequacy or inadequacy of heath appro- 
priations. 

b. Educational work for health ; any special needs ; opportu- 
nities for increasing educational work as shown by work done 
in other cities. 

c. Organized work against venereal diseases; its chief needs; 
work done by Syracuse Society for Prevention of Social 
Diseases. 

d. Quarantine practise in less serious contagious diseases. 

e. Medical inspection of schools; how adequate? In all 
schools? How financed? 

III. Food inspection 

a. Meat, fruit, fish. 

b. Screening from flies. 

c. Milk supply ; analysis of bacteriological count from Janu- 
ary I to July i, 191 1 ; percentage of producers whose milk was 
above the maximum bacterial count; method of enforcing the 
milk rule ; any licenses revoked ; analysis of cream count ; need 
of better publicity work on milk and cream scoring. 

IV. Water supply 

a. Source of general supply ; water sheds ; cost. 

b. Surface wells ; springs. 

V. Sewerage system 

a. Houses connected ; open privy vaults not connected with 
sewers. 

b. Location of sewer outlets. 

VI. Garbage disposal 

a. Cost; method. 

b. Location of plants. 

c. Method of collection of garbage. 

B. Housing of the Unskilled Workers 
I. A close study of six typical districts where the unskilled 
workers live 
a. Apartment buildings : number separate apartments ; ma- 
terial ; stories ; repair ; halls ; fire escapes ; basements. 

(496) 



No. 4] SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY 23 

b. Family apartments in the buildings (facts relating to indi- 
vidual apartments rather than the whole building of which each 
apartment is a part) : number of rooms ; number of families ; 
number of adults, children and boarders ; cleanliness ; light ; 
ventilation ; plumbing. 

c. Water supply: location; number of persons per tap; 
bath; drainage. 

d. Yards: area; cleanliness; live stock; alley; garbage; 
rubbish. 

e. Toilets: inside; outside; cleanliness; number using; 
sewer connection. 

f. Rent. 

II. Similar close study of a few old tenement houses 

III. Similar study of a few new apartment and tenement houses 
To see whether the new ones are conforming to accepted 

principles of good housing, or whether they are making the 
same mistakes as those made in the old tenements. 

IV. Lodging houses 

Number ; rooms ; beds ; air-space per bed ; charges for 
lodging. 

V. A census of the number of open privy vaults, by wards, 

throughout the city 

C. Foreign Population 
I. Statistics of foreign populations 

a. Total number of foreigners ; number by nationalities. 

b. Number, by sex and age groups. 

c. Number of families. 

d. Number of immigrants, by nationalities, admitted to New 
York state during 1909-19 10. 

e. Sex and ages of same. 

f. Illiteracy of those 14 years old and over. 

g. Number of immigrants, by nationalities, who arrived in 
Syracuse during 1909-19 10. 

h. Number, by nationalities, in hospitals, 
i. Number in prison. 

j. Number in almshouses; number applying for relief and 
charity. 

(497) 



24 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

II. Neighborhoods 

a. Map showing foreign quarters, by nationalities. 

III. Housing and lodging conditions (made in conjunction with 

general housing study) 

a. Kind of lodging. 

b. Study of a few old tenements in each neighborhood. 

c. Number of persons in each house. 

d. Number of lodgers and families. 

e. Number of persons and beds in each room. 

f. List of lodging houses and number of immigrant lodgers 
in each place. 

IV. Industrial opportunities 

a. Industries employing foreigners. 

b. Number, by nationalities, in each industry. 

c. Methods of obtaining work. 

d. Hours of work, in general. 

e. Days per week. 

f. Any night work. 

g. Industries continuous through year, 
h. Days worked yearly and quarterly. 

i. Estimated average yearly wages for both skilled and un- 
skilled workers. 

V. Economic conditions 

a. Amount of money transmitted to different countries dur- 
ing 1 909-1 910 by post-office money orders; drafts on foreign 
banks ; express orders. 

b. Number of local foreign bankers. 

c. Number of steamship ticket agents. 

d. Any need for postal savings banks? 

e. Number of immigrants that own houses. 

VI. Educational opportunities 

a. Number and location of public schools ; of evening classes ; 
of private schools. 

b. Number of adults and children, by nationalities, attending 
evening schools. 

(498) 



No. 4] SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY 2 $ 

VII. Naturalization 

a. Number of applicants for first papers, by nationalities, for 
the last five years. 

b. Applicants for final papers, by nationalities, for the last 
five years. 

c. Number of final papers issued. 

d. Final papers denied. 

e. Final papers still pending. 

f. Number of naturalized citizens who voted at last few 
elections. 

VIII. Courts 

a. Number of arrests and convictions, by ages and nation- 
alities. 

b. Juvenile delinquency. 

c. Interpreters in court. 

d. Shyster lawyers. 

e. Any legal aid societies? 

f. Action in accident cases. 

g. Ambulance chasers. 

IX. Social agencies for betterment, protection and relief. 

a. Foreign societies. 

b. Labor unions among foreigners. 

c. Civic clubs among foreigners. 

d. Settlements. 

e. Playgrounds accessible to immigrants. 

f. Public baths. 

g. Consuls or consular agents, 
h. Handicap of foreign women. 

i. Notaries public, midwives and doctors, among foreigners. 

D. Juvenile delinquency 

I. An analysis of cases of juvenile delinquency, by wards and 
blocks, throughout the city 
Its relation to the congestion of population and the lack of 
open spaces where children may play. 

(499) 



26 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

II. Nature of offenses 

a. Proportion that are offenses against the person ; propor- 
tion offenses against property. 

b. Locality in which offenses against property predominate 
over offenses against person, and vice versa, 

c. Similarly, by nationalities. 

d. Proportion that are first offenders ; proportion repeaters. 

III. Individual conditions 

a. Age of largest proportion of offenders of both sexes. 

b. Physical condition — stature and weight; diseased? 

c. Mental condition : proportions bright, dull, defective, fear- 
less, venturesome. 

IV. Social environment 

a. Parental condition : proportion with both parents living ; 
proportion fatherless, motherless, orphans, illegitimates. 

b. Condition of home : regular employment; kind of employ- 
ment. 

V. Conclusions 

Remedial agencies needed ; playgrounds, boys' clubs, library 
extension? 

E. Labor Conditions, General 

I. Wages of men and women in industry 

a. Weekly earnings; skilled or unskilled, by trades. 

b. Annual earnings. 

c. Day labor or piece work, by industries. 

d. Increases in pay in last 15 years. 

e. Extra pay for overtime work. 

f. Recent changes in hours per day affecting wages. 

g. " Speeding" tendencies, if any. 

II. Hours of labor 

a. Hours per day ; Saturday hours. 

b. Days per week — any seven-day labor? 

c. Extra time work. 

d. Day work or night work. 

(Soo) 



No. 4] SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY 2 y 

e. Industry continuous through year. Days worked in year. 

f. How long in the industry. 

III. Conditions of labor 

a. Sanitary conditions of plant — ventilation. 

b. Occupational diseases. 

c. Industrial accidents : safety devices ; settlements for injury 
or death. 

IV. Organization of labor and capital. 

a. Trade unions. 

b. Union of employers. 

c. Protective agencies : insurance; hospitals; societies; legal 
aid. 

d. Avenues of expression regarding work conditions. 

V. Individual and home conditions 

a. Married ; any children ; keep boarders ; other members of 
family work ; own home ? 

b. Support self. 

c. Save any money? 

d. Leisure for reading or recreation. 

e. Sanitary conditions of home surroundings. 

VI. Any recent serious labor troubles ; strikes, lockouts. 

F. Child Labor 

I. Thoroughness of inspection 

a. Number of children granted work certificates, by nation- 
alities. 

b. Number found by inspectors. 

c. Number not found. 

d. Number of inspectors. 

II. Newsboys 

a. Age classification. 

b. Violators of the law. 

c. Earnings. 

d. Character of school work done by newsboys. 

e. Newsboys in juvenile court. 

f. Newsboys and truant school. 

(501) 



28 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

III. Issuance and regulation of working papers 

IV. Summer child workers 

a. Number missing more than one week of school. 

b. Average time missed. 

c. Effect on scholarship. 

V. Night messenger law 

VI. Hours, pay, regulation, among child workers 

a. Bootblacks. 

b. Pin boys in bowling alleys. 

c. Morning paper carriers. 

d. Child workers in home industry. 

The outline on betterment agencies laid special emphasis 
upon the investment in equipment, the cost of relief work, and 
the social responsibility felt by church, school, university, 
hospital, Christian associations and settlements; and the out- 
line on civic improvement covered the need of a city plan, 
directions of the city's growth, recreation needs, park and 
playground facilities, the elimination of grade crossings and the 
improvement of water fronts. 

As the investigations progressed the mass of data collected 
began to show cleavages along certain clear-cut lines ; and by 
autumn after the several reports were drafted the central com- 
mittee was able to put its finger upon what it had reason to 
believe to be the weak spots in local civic and social conditions. 

In order to give the findings of the survey wide local publicity 
the central committee determined to have a Know-Your-City- 
Week last November. The week started off with forty minis- 
ters preaching sermons, on Sunday morning, on the civic re- 
sponsibilities of citizenship. On Monday exercises were held 
in the public schools, the main feature being the reading of 
prize essays written by the children of the schools on " How to 
Make Syracuse a Better City." Over iooo essays were written 
and the dominant note struck in the essays indicated that the 
children had caught the point that a better city involves not only 
greater business prosperity but the betterment of living and 
work conditions ; in other words, that emphasis upon human 
welfare, whether through better sanitation and public health 

(502) 



No. 4] SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY 29 

regulations, better houses to live in, safer places to work in, 
or greater opportunities for self-improvement, is of prime im- 
portance in city advance. The survey committee regarded 
the essay contest as one of the best achievements of the whole 
enterprise. On the other afternoons throughout the week, 
conferences on concrete local problems were held in one of the 
chambers of the county court house. In the main, the subjects 
were closely related to those discussed at the respective evening 
meetings; and the discussions were led and participated in by 
representative citizens, upon the -shoulders of many of whom 
the work of carrying out reform measures advocated by the 
committee would undoubtedly fall. 

At the evening mass meetings, which were attended by an 
average of 500 persons per night, the survey reports were read 
from the platform ; and speakers from out of the city pointed 
the moral of local findings from the vantage point of a national 
perspective. One of these meetings, the one which probably 
involved the greatest outlay of both time and money, was com- 
pletely taken charge of by the physicians of the local Academy 
of Medicine. The larger audience reached, of course, was 
through the medium of the newspapers, which cooperated 
thoroughly. Several of the reports were reproduced in full by 
the press. Further publicity for the facts was gained through 
the exhibit of maps, charts, and diagrams showing graphically 
the kernel of each report. The exhibit occupied sixty feet of 
window space of a retail store on one of the most prominent 
street corners in the city. 

With reports in hand the central committee formulated seven 
resolutions as a preliminary working program for the city, which 
would not be partisan, sectarian or sectional, but would aim at 
healthy industrial and social growth. In an eighth resolution 
the committee sent back to the bodies which created it, and 
which it jointly represented, a recommendation that they take 
action to see that the program is entered upon. The resolu- 
tions are as follows : 

First, that the mayor and common council be urged to estab- 
lish a city-planning and housing commission to secure a plan 
for the city's growth and development, and draw up a housing 

(503) 



30 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

code such as would meet the needs of the city for some time 
to come. 

Second, that the board of education be petitioned to consider 
and adopt a far-reaching plan for the education of the foreign 
population of the city by a larger provision of night schools, by 
the introduction of civics and industrial courses in night schools 
and by the extension of vocational training to the grades. 

Third, that the police and school departments be petitioned 
to enforce the child-labor laws relative to the street trades. 

Fourth, that the board of health be petitioned to provide : 

(a) For the inspection of mercantile establishments and for 
the enforcement of those provisions relating to child labor, 
hours of work of women, and sanitary conditions under which 
such people work. 

(b) For the publishing monthly of the milk score of all milk 
producers whose milk is sold in the city. 

(c) For more rigid inspection of tenements. 

- (d) For the engagement by the city of the services of some 
sanitarian of national standing to study and report on the needs 
of the public health of Syracuse, as a basis for planning future 
health work. 

Fifth, that the employers engaged in such industries as re- 
quire the plant to be in continuous operation be urged to make 
such adjustments as to assure every laborer one day of rest in 
seven. 

Sixth, that there should be among the betterment agencies of 
the city a closer cooperation expressed in some system, such as 
a united charities, a social-service league or an associated chari- 
ties organized on broader lines than those in existence at 
present. 

Seventh, that the city at large have some organization to 
study the needs and development of the city and to crystallize 
the findings of such studies in some yearly program such as 
this Know-Your-City-Week. 

Eighth, that to accomplish this end the central survey com- 
mittee recommend to the respective bodies represented in the 
committee the formation of a comprehensive and democratic 
body to study the problems and promote the adoption of the 
reforms suggested by the survey. 

(504) 



No. 4] SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY 3 1 

In the few months since the resolutions were adopted, the 
central committee has succeeded in getting local organizations 
of one kind and another to back up nearly all of the resolutions 
and to carry on a definite campaign for the changes advocated 
in them. Several of these campaigns have already succeeded 
and the success of others is believed by the committee to be 
sure. A few of the results may be enumerated : 

The mayor has publicly promised to appoint a city-planning 
and housing commission. In the meantime a volunteer city- 
plan commission is at work. A committee of the board of 
education and a volunteer committee are at work gathering in- 
formation from all over the country as to effective school work 
for foreigners. The police are thoroughly enforcing laws regu- 
lating the work of newsboys. The bureau of health has of its 
own accord invited a trained sanitarian to the city to go over 
its work and to make suggestions, and those who have been 
watching the milk scores state that they have shown marked 
improvement this winter over a year ago. A federation of all 
betterment agencies in the city is being formed with enthusiastic 
general cooperation. A further survey, by experts from the 
New York Bureau of Municipal Research, as already noted, has 
been made, and it is planned that other investigations shall be 
carried on by the new federation. One more or less intangible 
but nevertheless very real and important result is the awakened 
interest of citizens in civic and social affairs of the city. 

This has been accomplished at a total money outlay amount- 
ing to only a little above $1100 — the investigations costing 
about $500 and the publicity work about $600. 

(505) 



A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY 1 

GEORGE THOMAS PALMER, M. D. 

Springfield, Illinois 

ON account of the gratifying results in public health work 
during the past few years, and on account of the popular 
interest born of the realization of our ability actually to 
reduce morbidity and increase the span of life, it is easier to 
bring about public health reform in an American municipality 
than to secure any other kind of civic improvement. 

Jealous as they are of personal liberty, the people have come 
to recognize that they must submit to a certain amount of 
inconvenience and even to scrutiny and investigation of their 
lives and personal affairs in the interest of the health of the 
community. The business man who is not in sympathy with 
many social reforms appreciates the practical utility of sanitary 
and public health supervision. 

We have ceased to question the right of health authorities to 
extend their operations even far beyond the letter of the law, 
while opposition to private agencies working for sanitary better- 
ment, even when accompanied by wide publicity of unenviable 
civic conditions, is usually inconsiderable. The intelligent por- 
tion of the community is fully capable of appreciating the 
benefits to be derived from such activities. 

Hence, the sanitary survey may often be employed as an 
entering wedge in general civic betterment, leading naturally to 
increased interest in those other agencies for improvement which 
extend more intimately into the moral and social lives of the 
people, but all of which are more or less associated with public 
health work. 

It is on this account, in my opinion, that the sanitary survey 
is the most important phase of general survey work just at this 
time, when municipalities are but beginning to recognize the 
value of systematic study of their underlying conditions. 

x Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 1912. 

(506) 



A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY 



33 



Further, I am impressed by the fact that an enormous field 
is opening up in the study of the sanitary and other civic con- 
ditions in the smaller cities of the nation. The municipalities 
ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 in population represent an 
enormous number of people and present civic problems quite 
as definite, if not so extensive, as those to be found in any of 
the larger cities. And yet the civic student may find in almost 
any of the hundreds of smaller American cities an absolutely 
virgin field which so far has been shamefully neglected. 

I feel that I should have no claim upon your attention this 
afternoon, that I should not be here to present a plan of survey, 
except on account of an experience which, it seems to me, 
should have been looked upon as commonplace enough, but 
which appears to have been regarded as somewhat unusual. 

This experience was the study of the sanitary conditions of a 
city of from 50,000 to 60,000 population and the attainment of 
fairly satisfactory results without the expenditure of money. 
Before offering to you a definite pi' 11 of sanitary survey, I feel 
that it may be worth while to describe that simple investigation, 
the methods employed and the results attained. 

I certainly have no intention here and in the presence of 
those who have done such brilliant things along those lines, of 
discussing anything of the theory or principles of survey work. 
I would suggest, however, that perhaps the very brilliancy of 
your accomplishment has prevented many municipalities from 
entering upon such undertakings. 

With the Pittsburgh survey as the best known if not the only 
generally known specimen of its class, many persons have come 
to look upon the survey as a gigantic, technical and complicated 
institution, demanding a large amount of expert skill and con- 
siderable financial outlay for its accomplishment. 

Wherever I have found intelligent city officials and citizens 
interested in civic betterment, I have found an earnest desire 
for more thorough knowledge and understanding of existing 
civic conditions ; but a conviction that the survey is entirely 
beyond the reach of the average municipality. 

In fact, at the time we undertook the sanitary study of 
Springfield, if someone had suggested such a thing as a " sani- 

(507) 



34 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

tary survey," I should have replied that we were not in a posi- 
tion financially or otherwise for such an ambitious undertaking. 

As it was, we simply started out in Springfield to ascertain 
certain definite facts, and we had not the faintest idea how far 
or where our studies would carry us. We knew that the city 
had a higher typhoid-fever mortality than other cities of like 
size and similarly situated. We knew that we had houses and 
tenements which served as centers of infection of tuberculosis 
and other diseases. We realized that our infant mortality was 
too high. We started out simply with the purpose of ascertain- 
ing the causes of our undue morbidity and mortality that we 
might be enabled to take intelligent steps to decrease sickness 
and lower our death rate. 

It was not until our work was completed that we realized that 
we had done anything which could be dignified by the term 
" sanitary survey." I cite this fact because I feel that there 
ought to be something done to change the general conception 
of the term " survey " and because I am convinced that we 
must reach a clearer definition of the term before many cities 
will undertake it. 

I am also impressed with the belief that when a city sets out 
to learn definite things about itself and for a definite purpose, 
the results will be more satisfactory than when an attempt is 
made merely to apply a plan of study for no better reason than 
that other cities have done the same thing. That is, the desire 
for knowledge without the plan will come nearer landing us 
somewhere than the plan, however perfect, without the under- 
lying intelligent desire for knowledge. 

In the vaults of the city hall we recently unearthed several 
massive volumes, the results of a sanitary survey carried out in 
1885 on a plan suggested by Dr. John H. Rauch, then secretary 
of the Illinois state board of health. The city council appro- 
priated $1,000 for the purpose and the work was carried out 
with most minute detail. The net result of this painstaking 
application of a survey plan consists of these big, clumsy 
volumes, dusty, moth-eaten and stowed away in a vault. In 
fact, when our work was done in 19 10, no one recalled that a 
sanitary survey of the city had ever been carried out. This is 

(508) 



No. 4] A SANITARY A AD HEALTH SURVEY 35 

merely an example of a city going through the motions and 
carrying out a plan suggested by others, but without a desire 
for specific results. 

In 1 9 10 we awoke to the fact that Springfield had a typhoid- 
fever mortality of something over 40 per 100,000 of popula- 
tion. This mortality had been as high as 85 per 100,000 and 
the last year recorded showed a mortality of 52. That was 
twice as high as it should have been. Half of our deaths from 
this disease were apparently unnecessary. 

Four million dollars had been expended by the city for water 
works and sewer system, and the mains extended to all sections 
of the town. We made repeated analyses of the city water, ex- 
tending over a long period of time, and found that the public 
supply was always safe for domestic use. We had to go further 
to locate the cause of our excessive typhoid-fever mortality. 
Analyses were made of 150 samples from supposedly good 
wells. All but three were found to be dangerously polluted. 
Then the question arose as to the extent to which wells were 
used in the city and the cause of well pollution. On these 
points, as is true in practically every other city in the United 
States where wells are used, reliable information was entirely 
unobtainable. 

There was but one thing left to do and that was to have the 
four underpaid, untrained but enthusiastic inspectors of the 
health department visit each of the 9,000 homes spread out 
over the 1 ,600 blocks of the city to locate every well and vault 
and ascertain the general sanitary conditions of all premises. 
It required two months to cover the city, the work being done 
in addition to the rather exacting routine duties of the depart- 
ment. The results plainly told the story of our typhoid fever. 

The 9,000 homes of the city had 6,000 shallow wells, the 
pollution of which was guaranteed by 7,000 privy vaults. There 
were 6,000 polluted wells in the city, and the water mains and 
sewers were convenient to 5,000 of the premises that maintained 
them. That is, the use of 5,000 of the 6,000 polluted wells in 
the city was entirely unnecessary. From a sanitary standpoint 
the city's expenditure of $4,000,000 was wasted. 

I should make this statement about my home town with 

(509) 



36 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

reluctance were it not that Mr. Hiram Messenger has advised 
me, after studying the typhoid conditions of over thirty cities of 
from 40,000 to 100,000 people, that Springfield is now the only 
one in which he could obtain accurate data as to wells and well 
pollution. 

The results of our investigation were not bound in red morocco 
and filed away to decay, nor were they hopelessly buried in 
dreary and unread reports. We prepared a large map of the 
city, large enough to show each house by number and the gross 
sanitary conditions of all premises. Each unsanitary lot was 
shown in red and every well, vault, sewer, water main, vacant 
lot, business property and public building was indicated by 
symbol or color. 

We knew the facts ; but we had to demonstrate them to get 
results. The map was shown at a luncheon to three hundred 
members of the chamber of commerce, with a talk on " The 
Truth About Springfield." The business men endorsed our 
work and the newspapers gave the facts wide publicity. Next 
the map was hung in the council chamber and the members of 
the city council were shown why we should have ordinances 
compelling property holders to connect their property with 
sewers and water mains. The ordinances were passed in three 
weeks, although we had vainly sought to secure such ordinances 
for over two years. 

Then another interesting thing developed. Protest on the 
part of the business men gave way to serious consideration. 
The work had gone too far to be stopped and it became the 
part of wisdom to fall in line with it. Real-estate men adver- 
tised their property on its sanitary merits and money became 
harder to borrow on unsanitary property. For the first time in 
the community, sanitation took on a commercial value. 

But the Springfield sanitary survey — if you choose to dignify 
it by that name — went a little further than a mere census of 
wells and vaults. During the house-to-house canvass the in- 
spectors made notes of all unsanitary conditions and all nuisances 
and these were ordered remedied and abated. 

They also noted all tenements and bad housing conditions 
and the data furnished by them along this line afforded the 

(5io) 



No . 4 ] A SANITAR Y AND HEAL TH SUR VEY 37 

basis for the housing investigations we have since carried on. 
We have studied, charted out and photographed the worst con- 
ditions in the city and we are now ready to do our part in con- 
vincing the Illinois General Assembly that there are slums in 
the smaller cities and that there is a crying need for good state 
housing laws. 

In this housing investigation we took a tuberculosis census of 
the worst tenements and fumigated and disinfected as far as 
possible. We succeeded in improving the conditions of the 
worst tenements ; but lack of state laws made satisfactory action 
impossible. 

As I have stated, we were making this investigation entirely 
without a plan or system. Each undertaking when completed 
had pointed out something else that required attention, and at 
this juncture we found a new force urging us on. That was an 
aroused public interest. The better element of the people were 
watching to see what we would do next and the four daily news- 
papers of the city backed up our work and featured everything 
that was undertaken. This aroused interest was sufficient to 
hush all opposition. 

We were now ready to consider our infant mortality. Our 
first effort was in the direction of an honest milk, containing a 
reasonable butter fat and total solids and free from preservatives, 
We recognized, however, that this was a commercial rather than 
a public health proposition. 

We realized that " the amount of manure a milk contains is 
more important than the amount of butter fat" and we deter- 
mined to visit and inspect all of the dairies supplying milk to 
the city. In this tour of inspection we attempted to teach the 
dairymen and farmers the prerequisites of pure and clean milk ; 
but we warned all of them that inspections would be made from 
time to time and that the condition of all dairies would be made 
a matter of public record open to milk consumers. 

This investigation of dairies was followed by inspection of 
restaurants and bakeries, the details of which cannot interest 
you here. The results, however, were gratifying to us. 

We are now engaged upon an investigation of garbage collec- 
tion and disposal, studying our own conditions and the methods 

(511) 



38 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

of other cities. We are trying to solve what I am inclined to 
regard as the livest public health problem of American munici- 
palities — a problem, incidentally, which is not yet solved ideally 
by even the largest of cities. 

The Springfield sanitary survey is not complete, nor will it 
be for several years to come. We are studying the town part 
by part and we are preserving all of our data in the hope that 
we may be able some day to show a complete sanitary survey 
of a smaller city. But every step is being taken with a definite 
plan in view. We have to produce results, and results that we 
can show the people. 

The people, as a rule, will give active cooperation to work of 
this kind. They will be tolerant of criticism of local conditions. 
But after a while they will meet you with the essentially practi- 
cal and entirely proper demand, " Now that you have given us 
all this undesirable publicity, what have you accomplished?" 
Incidentally, they are not to be satisfied with a story of " inte- 
resting data." The only way you can safely use a town as 
clinical material is to cure its sores. 

For twelve years the average mortality from typhoid fever in 
Springfield had been something over 40 per 100,000 popula- 
tion. In 1910, the year our investigation was undertaken, it 
was 52. In 191 1, the year after our agitation of polluted wells 
and the passage of sanitary ordinances, our typhoid mortality 
was in the twenties. The record of one year is not conclusive. 
Such a result immediately following sanitary agitation, however, 
is suggestive and encouraging. 

In 1909, sixty-eight infants died from summer diarrhea; in 
19 10, even after we had a good commercial milk supply, there 
were sixty-four deaths. In 191 1, after our dairy inspections, 
there were forty-one deaths. This may be coincidence, but it 
is suggestive. 

My only excuse for burdening you with the details of our 
work in a small mid-western town is to make you realize that 
the small town has real sanitary and public health problems 
unappreciated by the people, to demonstrate that reasonably 
good results may be attained without an elaborate plan and 
without any considerable expenditure of money. The same 
excuse will justify this additional detail. 

(512) 



No. 4] A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY 39 

The collection of data in our work was entrusted to four in- 
spectors, already overworked, and receiving $60 per month — 
men entirely without sanitary training and three of them with 
little more than ward-school education. They have served as 
sanitary inspectors, dairy inspectors, housing inspectors, as con- 
ditions required, their only instruction being such as we could 
give them ; but each man being fully informed as to what we 
were trying to do and why. 

In addition to the salaries of these inspectors, which had 
been paid from time immemorial, the total cost of the survey 
and the sanitary map to the city of Springfield was less than 
$100. 

There is but one other thought in connection with our sani- 
tary study. We were after a direct result, the reduction of 
morbidity and mortality. We are encouraged to believe that 
we have accomplished at least enough to justify the effort. But 
we now feel that we see other results more gratifying and far- 
reaching than we had anticipated. 

Our work had been accompanied by unrestrained publicity. 
We accentuated the civic needs of the city in every possible 
way and we feel that we perhaps stimulated others to activity in 
their individual lines. We had demonstrated, perhaps, that 
civic improvement was not so difficult to bring about as had 
been generally believed and we had possibly stimulated a general 
spirit of investigation. 

At any rate, whether our sanitary investigations had anything 
to do with it or not, a great many things have come about dur- 
ing the past two years. A detention home has removed children 
from the jail and has simplified the work of an excellent trained 
probation officer. A tuberculosis association of 1 ,000 members 
operates a dispensary and employs visiting nurses. Medical 
inspection of school children is established. The almshouse of 
Sangamon County is being thoroughly studied from a medical 
and sociological standpoint and provision is being made for 
county care of indigent consumptives. The dispensing of 
county charity has been placed in better hands. But most 
important, the people are awakened to the necessity of a thor- 
ough knowledge of local conditions, and a broad and sweeping 

(5i3) 



40 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

survey of the city — a real survey this time — is being considered 
and is practically assured. 

The experience in Springfield, the gratifying results attained 
without the employment of expert skill, has made me believe 
that similar results may be attained by other cities either 
through the agency of their health departments or through the 
activities of private agencies. The survey in Springfield was 
carried out without a definite plan of action, and the following 
scheme of study was the result rather than the foundation of 
the work. 

Unquestionably a well defined plan will serve to simplify the 
survey, will render it more systematic and will prevent ineffective 
labor in various directions. The one submitted here is little 
more than a skeleton in the elaboration of which we are now 
engaged. It may serve in its present form, however, to suggest 
a rather simple and consecutive line of action which will prove 
helpful to those about to engage in work of the kind. 

SCHEME OF A SANITARY SURVEY 

I. STUDY OF MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY FROM COMMUNI- 
CABLE DISEASES 

No intelligent work to reduce morbidity and mortality can be 
undertaken until we know the present morbidity and mortality 
and the averages for several years past. 

In most instances morbidity from communicable diseases 
may be ascertained from the records of the local health depart- 
ment. Such records, however, are frequently faulty and in- 
complete. Under such circumstances, the present morbidity 
may generally be estimated after interviewing all members of 
the local medical profession. Morbidity records for the past 
will be unattainable. 

Mortuary records for many years past should be obtained 
from the local health department. If the municipality has no 
registration of deaths, the desired data can usually be obtained 
from the state registrar of vital statistics or from the state board 
of health. 

After securing the present and past average mortality from 
preventable diseases, these should be compared with similar 

(5i4) 



No. 4] A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY 41 



r 



figures from^other municipalities as near the size and existing 
under as nearly the same conditions as possible. Much valuable 
information for purposes of comparison may be obtained from 
the last reports of the United States Census Office dealing with 
mortality^statistics. It is only by such comparison of figures that 
we can determine whether the local mortality is higher than it 
should be. 

1. Diseases to be Studied — (a) Typhoid fever; (b) tubercu- 

losis; (c) malaria; (d) yellow fever; (e) small-pox; 
(f) chicken-pox; (g) diphtheria; (h) scarlet fever; 
(i) measles ; (j) whooping cough ; (k) industrial diseases 
peculiar to the community; (1) summer diarrhea of in- 
fants ; (m) accidental deaths. 

2. Sources of Information — Local health department; state 

health department ; local physicians ; reports of United 
States Census Bureau. 
NOTES — Seek out the cause for every decided deviation from 
the normal or average mortality. Such deviations are at 
times due to outside influences bearing in no way upon 
local sanitary conditions. 

Ascertain total mortuary figures. Do not accept death 
estimates in percentages. One death in the community 
may affect the rate 100 per cent. 

II. WATER SUPPLY AND SEWAGE DISPOSAL 

(Special relation to typhoid fever.) 
1 . Source of Municipal Water Supply 

(a) Results of last analyses. 

A single analysis should not be accepted as final. 
Conditions in an unprotected supply often change 
from season to season. 

(b) Possible pollution of the public supply at source. 

Information should be obtained from the mu- 
nicipal water company, the local water depart- 
ment or the local health department. It would 
be well to inspect personally the source of supply. 
NOTE — If analyses have not been made, samples should be 

(5i5) 



42 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

secured and sent to laboratories for analysis. In several 
states, the state water survey, the state university or other 
state departments will make analyses of local water supplies 
without charge. Reliance should not be placed on the 
so-called " simple water tests." 

2. Private Wells 

(a) Extent to which they are used. (If used at all, it will 

be impossible to ascertain the extent without a 
house-to-house canvass. The same is true with 
privy vaults. See below.) 

(b) Analysis of water from presumably good wells. 

It is never worth while to make analyses of water 
from wells which are obviously polluted. 

3. Privy Vaults (Important on account of pollution of wells) 

(a) Extent to which used. 

(b) Enforcement of ordinances or regulations as to the 

distance of vaults from wells or cisterns. 
(c) B General construction of vaults to prevent soil pollution. 

4. Sewer System 

(a) Extent throughout the city. 

Location of those sections not reached by sewer. 

(b) Location of outlets of sewers. 

(i) Danger to people of this community, 
(ii) Danger to other municipalities. 

(c) Extent to which sewers are used by those to whom 

they are available. 
NOTE — Information as to the sewer system and the sewer out- 
lets may be obtained from the city engineer or the depart- 
ment of public works. The extent to which sewers are 
used by those to whom they are available can often be 
determined^only by house-to-house canvass. 

5 . Methods of Sewage Disposal 

(a) Is sewage " treated " before discharge or is it dis- 

charged in its raw state? If treated, what is the 
method of treatment? 

(b) Present and future dangers of the system employed. 

(5i6) 



No. 4] A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY 43 

6. Pollution of Soil 

(a) By privy vaults. 

(b) By polluted ponds or streams receiving sewage. 

(c) By sewers with loose joints. 

(d) By tile or surface drains. Private sewers. 

III. ALLEYS 

(Special relation to fly-borne diseases; nuisances from de- 
composition of organic waste matter; dust and mosquitoes.) 
Remember that, as a general principle, the alley belongs 
to the municipality and that it is unlawful to place ashes, 
manure, garbage or any other material therein. 

1. Ashes 

(a) Extent to which they are placed in alleys. Loose or 

in containers. 

(b) Disposal of ashes. 

2. Manure (breeding place for flies) 

(a) Extent to which it is placed in alleys. 

(b) Loose or in tight, screened boxes. 

(c) Frequency with which it is removed. 

To guarantee against the breeding of flies, manure 

should be removed at least once a week from 

alleys and premises, 
(c) Disposal of manure. 

(i) Dumps (sources of danger). 

(ii) Burned. 

(iii) Distribution to farmers for fertilizer. 

In some cities this is carried out system- 
atically and satisfactorily. 

3. Garbage (nuisance and flies) 

Presence in alleys (see Section IV) 

4. Alley Grade 

Drainage into yards. 

Low places breeding-ground of mosquito. 

Permitting the use of alleys for even the tem- 
porary disposal of ashes often results in raising 
the grade of the alley above that of surrounding 
($17) 



44 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

property, causing the water to drain into nearby 

yards. 

NOTE — In the house-to-house canvass proposed in this plan, all 

bad alley conditions should be noted and reported to the 

health department or to the department of streets and 

alleys. 

IV. GARBAGE DISPOSAL 
("The livest public health problem of American munici- 
palities.") 

(Special relation to fly-borne diseases, soil pollution. 
Dumps bear a close relation to contagious diseases.) 
i . Handling Garbage at Home 

(a) Are special cans or containers required? 

(b) Destroying garbage at home. 

(i) To what extent practised? 
(ii) Method employed. 

(c) Separation of refuse into garbage, ashes and rubbish. 

(d) Wrapping garbage in paper (dry garbage). 

2. Collection of Garbage 

(a) Public or private collection. 

(i) Cost to householder. 

(ii) Frequency of collection. 

(iii) Specially constructed garbage wagons. 

(iv) Regulations concerning collection. 

3 . Disposal of Garbage 

(a) Dumps. 

(i) Location of dumps. 

(ii) Character of waste taken to dumps. 

(iii) Policing dumps. 
NOTES — The municipality has no more right to permit the 
dumping of decomposable waste near to the home of a 
citizen than it has to empty its sewers near to the home of 
a citizen. 

The recovery of articles from the dumps, as is often done 
by the poor, is a common means of carrying contagious 
diseases into those homes in which such diseases are most 

(5i8) 



No. 4] A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY 45 

difficult to locate and control. Much of the most usable 
salvage in a city's waste has been discarded on account of 
contagious and infectious disease in the home. 

(b) Feeding garbage. 

(i) Distributing garbage to farmers, 
(ii) Municipal hog-feeding. 

Not a sanitary or practicable plan in the 

ordinary climate. 

(c) Incineration. 

(i) Incineration of garbage alone. 

(ii) Incineration of all waste. 

(iii) Incineration with artificial fuel. 

(iv) Burning garbage and other waste with its 

own combustible material. 

NOTES — The ideal method of refuse disposal is incineration of 

all kinds of waste — garbage, manure, ashes and rubbish. 

In this way we avoid the necessity of dumps of any kind 

in the community. 

Ideal incineration implies the utilization of the fuel content 
of the refuse itself. In this way sufficient heat may be 
obtained to produce steam for power in municipal plants. 

(d) Reduction of garbage. 

(i) By public or private company, 
(ii) Materials regained from garbage, 
(iii) Revenues to the city from reduction, 
(iv) Cost to the city. 

V. STAGNANT POOLS AND OPEN CISTERNS 
(Special relation to the mosquito and to malaria and yellow 
fever. More important in southern cities.) 

(a) Location of stagnant ponds and pools. 

(b) Best means of draining same. 

(c) Screening cisterns. 

VI. HOUSING 
(Special relation to tuberculosis, contagious diseases, im- 
morality, physical inefficiency, deficient education, crime and 
children). 

(519) 



46 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

i . General Survey of Housing 

In the house-to-house survey, all bad housing conditions 
should be located and noted for future investigation. 

2. Intensive Study of Housing 

The study of individual houses and blocks indicated in the 
general housing study as being undesirable. 

3 . Yard space 

(a) Percentage of lot unoccupied by buildings. 
(1) Grass and trees, 
(ii) Paved. 

(iii) Drainage and sanitary conditions, 
(iv) Uses of yard space. 

4. Light (A study of each room in undesirable buildings used 

for dwelling purposes) 

(a) Outside rooms. 

(b) Light wells. 

(c) Sky lights. 

(d) Dark rooms and uses of dark rooms. 

5. Ventilation (Studied according to above outlined scheme 

for light) 

6. Business Houses 

Relationship of dwellings or tenements to saloons, immoral 
resorts, business houses and industries. Dwellings over 
stables. 

7. Home Industries 

8. Congestion 

(a) Number of inmates. 

(b) Room congestion. 

(c) Roomers, boarders, homes and light housekeeping. 

9. Water Supply 

(a) Source. 

(b) Convenience to living quarters. 

10. Sewage 

1 1 . Condition of Plumbing 

This study should include observation of plumbing condi- 
tions and facilities for ordinary cleanliness. 

(520) 



No. 4] A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY 47 

1 2 . Disposal of Garbage and Waste 

1 3 . Nationality a?td National Traits 

14. Children 

Number of children in each dwelling, with note as to the 
manner in which they live, association with immorality, 
sanitary conditions, etc. 

1 5 . General Sanitation 

16. Transient or Permanent Residents 

NOTES — In collecting housing data the name of the landlord 
and agent of each piece of property should be obtained. 
Each dwelling, building or block studied should be mapped 
or platted out. 
Photographs should be obtained of the worst conditions. 

VII. RESTAURANTS, BAKERIES, BUTCHER SHOPS 
i . Sanitary Conditions 

(a) Cleanliness. 

(b) Plumbing. 

(i) Condition. 

(ii) Location in relation to foodstuffs. 

(c) Living quarters near to place of food handling. 

(d) Protection from flies. 

(e) Health of workers in foods. 

(f) Spitting. 

(g) Care and protection of food supplies. 

VIII. MILK SUPPLY 

(Special relation to infant mortality, tuberculosis and con- 
tagious diseases.) 
1. Chemical Content (Butter fats and total solids) 

(a) How often tested by local authorities. 

(b) Collection from homes of consumers or on open 

market and testing privately. 

(c) Freedom from preservatives. 

A milk containing the legal amount of fats and 
solids and free from preservatives is merely a 
good commercial milk. The greatest importance 
attaches to the amount of filth the milk contains. 
(521) 



48 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

2. Dairy Inspection 

(a) Health and condition of cows. 

(i) General health, 
(ii) Tuberculin testing, 
(iii) Cleanliness. 
(iv) Feed. 

(b) Condition and construction of barns. 

(c) Condition and cleanliness of milk houses. 

(d) Conditions and method of shipping. 

(i) Cleansing cans. 

(ii) Rapid reduction of temperature. 

(iii) Pasteurization. 

(e) Water supply. 

3. Bottling 

(a) Sterilization of bottles. 

(b) Hand or machine bottling. 

(c) Place of bottling. 

(i) At the farm (good). 

(ii) At the milk depot (unsatisfactory). 

(iii) In the milk wagon (intolerable). 

4. Health of Employes 

Contagious diseases are often transmitted by the milk sup- 
ply. Scarlet fever and diphtheria have been traced back 
to this disease among milk handlers or their families. 

5. Milk Depots 

Methods of handling milk and general sanitary conditions. 

6. Infant Mortality 

Ascertain the source of milk supply in all cases where 
there has been infant mortality in the family. 

IX. METHODS OF STUDY 

1 . House-to- House Canvass 

This is the foundation of every satisfactory sanitary survey. 
Study each house and yard and note all wells, privy vaults 
and the general sanitary conditions. Information is also 
gathered during this house-to-house canvass upon which to 
base the future investigation of water supply and sewage ; 

(522) 



No. 4] A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY 49 

alleys; garbage disposal; stagnant pools and cisterns; 
housing; restaurants and bakeries. 

2. Sanitary Map 

A large map of the city should be prepared with each lot 
large enough to show house number, wells, vaults and all 
gross sanitary conditions. This map should also show the 
paved streets, sewer system and water mains. 
The making of the map teaches a great deal about the city 
as a whole and brings together the accumulated data in a 
form which can be shown to the people or to the city 
officials. 

3. Study Water Supply, Sewers, Topography, etc. 

Study of the data in the office of the city engineer and 
department of public works. 

4. Intensive Study of the Various Subdivisions of Work 

(a) Visit all dumps and garbage-disposal plants. 

(b) Study all housing conditions and plat out all blocks, 

houses or rooms investigated. 

(c) Inspect all dairies supplying milk to the community, 

using the government score card as a guide. 

(d) Visit and inspect all restaurants, bakeries, etc. 

X. STUDY OF EXISTING LAWS AND ORDINANCES 
Study the state laws under which the municipality is given 
its right of public health control. 

Study the city ordinances to see what improvements can 
be brought about by merely enforcing existing laws. 

XL NEW ORDINANCES 
Ascertain what faulty conditions will require new ordinances 
to bring about their improvement. 

Study ordinances of other cities which are bringing about 
satisfactory results in these lines. 

XII. STUDY OF EXISTING HEALTH DEPARTMENT 
(See the standards of public health efficiency in an article 
by the writer, " The Inefficiency of Municipal Health De- 
partments," published in The American City, August, 191 1 ). 

(523) 



50 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

i . Duties of the Health Department under the Ordinances 

2. What Ordinances are not Enforced? (Ascertain why). 

3 . Study of Special Functions of the Department 

(a) Water analysis. 

(b) Milk inspection. 

(c) Quarantine. 

(d) Reports of communicable diseases. 

(e) Isolation hospital. 

(f) Abatement of nuisances. 

(g) Registration of vital statistics. 
(h) Constructive work. 

4. Provisions for Efficient Service 

(a) Qualifications of health officer. 

(b) Salary and assistants. 

(c) Reasonable appropriations. 

(d) Freedom from politics. Civil service. 

XIII. METHODS OF PUBLICITY 

(a) The sanitary map. 

(b) Newspapers. 

(c) Expositions and exhibits. 

(d) Bulletins and circulars. 

(e) Public meetings. 

(f) Churches. 

XIV. DEALING WITH CITY OFFICIALS 
Cooperation if possible. 

Meet opposition by a showing of fact and overcome oppo- 
sition by publicity. 

XV. THE SURVEY STAFF 

(a) A competent physician, preferably with some public 

health training. 

(b) A public-spirited and competent lawyer. 

(c) Staff of paid or volunteer inspectors to collect data. 

(d) A practical plumber, or better, a sanitary engineer. 

(e) Clerical help and draftsman. 

(524) 



THE RELATION OF A NEIGHBORHOOD SURVEY 
TO SOCIAL NEEDS » 

BY PAULINE GOLDMARK 
Bureau of Social Research, Russell Sage Foundation 

THE relation of a social survey to the social agencies in its 
territory is to a large extent a test and index of its use- 
fulness and service to the community. After an inves- 
tigation has been made, one may fairly ask the question, How 
does the new knowledge meet the social needs of the particular 
city or neighborhood in which it is undertaken? How much 
does it contribute toward solving the practical problems of the 
active agents within the district? 

It is, of course, true that in the new quest for wider knowl- 
edge, merely descriptive investigations have been justified. 
Fuller acquaintance with one's particular neighborhood, a closer 
knowledge and contact with one's neighbor have been of dis- 
tinct service. Such studies have widened the outlook for the 
practical workers who are too closely attentive to their own 
particular tasks. To know the various nationalities represented 
in any district, to look up its housing conditions, its health rec- 
ords, its representative industries, and all the descriptive mate- 
rial that gives a general picture of the neighborhood — all this 
is essential. 

But in the first stages of this new search, are we not inclined 
to be too readily satisfied with objective facts rather than going 
deeper down under the surface to reach those subtler truths 
which concern the whole community? It is surely not enough 
to know the people statistically, to count their numbers, race, 
and age distribution, and to note their mortality records. One 
must also, in any given community, take note of the predom- 
inating influences that are affecting life for good or ill. What 
is happening to your community? What is its temper? Is it 
progressing or deteriorating? What is the younger generation 

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 1912. 

(525) 



52 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

doing and thinking ? What are all the social causes that underlie 
these phenomena? 

I can best illustrate my point by referring to some definite 
instances with which I have become acquainted in the study of 
a single neighborhood in New York city. A limited area was 
chosen for an intensive investigation so as to reduce our problem 
to a manageable unit. It is a West Side district which lacks 
the picturesqueness of the immigrant quarters of the city. We 
are dealing with the problems not of newcomers but of the 
second and third generation of foreign parentage — hitherto 
little regarded. Unlike the kaleidoscopic shifting of nationali- 
ties on the East Side, where the newcomers succeed each other 
with amazing speed, where Italians and Russians have dislodged 
the earlier groups of Irish and Germans, this population on the 
West Side is stationary. Here is one of the few spots on Man- 
hattan Island where the population has not increased in the last 
decade. The bulk of the community is Irish and German- 
American. The immigrant groups are not yet conspicuous. 
The problems of Americanization and amalgamation therefore 
do not primarily concern such a neighborhood. These people 
are American citizens, and we have to discover a fact of cardi- 
nal importance, namely, what place are they and their children 
taking in the community? In other words, what may happen 
when a tenement-house population is comparatively stationary 
for several generations? 

This district of ours is a "back-set" fron the main current of 
the city's life. It is discouraged and apathetic. The bolder 
and more enterprising spirits are attracted to the more thriving 
parts of the city. Here there are no signs of prosperity. 
Loafers at every corner, street fights, drunkenness and poverty 
are the obvious features of the neighborhood. All admit that 
it is " tough." The waterside is infested with lawless thugs and 
gangs and the neighborhood is hardened to deeds of violence 
that would stir any other community to action. 

In such an environment it is not surprising that the various 
social agencies should share in the general discouragement. 
The better elements, such as they are, do not show on the sur- 
face. This district has never known great prosperity. The in- 

(526) 



No. 4] NEIGHBORHOOD SURVEYS 53 

dustries, which have since moved away, first attracted its people. 
" Jerry " builders put up cheap tenements of a poor type in the 
70's and 8o's. These antiquated old houses, with their window- 
less rooms, are still the only homes for the workers. Rents are 
somewhat lower than in other parts of the city. This advantage 
and the prevailing apathy and inertia have kept the people here. 
Many have lived here during their whole lifetime. In brief, it 
is a deteriorating rather than an advancing community. 

Such then is our district at first sight. If the social survey is 
to be helpful, it must go beneath the surface ; it must show the 
underlying causes which have produced this sinister result. 
However baffling the task, we must provide for the social agen- 
cies which are doing the constructive work of the community a 
knowledge of the fundamental facts and tendencies. Thus the 
study of the industries, for instance, must embrace the far- 
reaching results of employment. It is not enough to know the 
industrial establishments and the immediate conditions of work ; 
we need to consider other elements. Who, for instance, com- 
pose the bulk of the working force? What is the wage scale 
and the chance of advancement? Are the foreigners under- 
bidding the American workmen, and are the latter being driven 
to less desirable employments ? Are the industries using up the 
young and vigorous stock and crowding out the prematurely 
old? Are there industries which require unemployment and 
under-employment? We ought to examine each industry to 
see whether it is leaving its workers stranded after a short trade 
life and manufacturing an army of unemployables. And if then 
employment is precarious for a man past middle life, what is he 
driven to? What forms of casual labor can he obtain? Some 
estimate must eventually be made of the social waste of such an 
industrial system. 

These suggestions do no more than touch the question of 
economic pressure and its significance in the lives of the wage- 
earners. They are questions of prime importance, however, 
since they determine the earning capacity of the workers and 
in consequence the status of the entire family. 

For the social agencies of any community, to take another 
instance, there is no more important task at the present moment 

(527) 



54 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

than getting the right sort of employment for boys and girls. 
In place of the present haphazard methods of beginning work, 
the survey should be able to tell what are the really good occu- 
pations for young people to enter, where advancement is as- 
sured for the competent, and what " dead end" occupations are 
to be avoided. 

In any community where there are foreign colonies, a totally 
different range of problems opens up. Segregated from the life 
of the city, and separated from all Americanizing influences, 
their activities are often unknown to us. Who would imagine, 
for instance, that in a Slavic colony in our midst, one would 
find the government of a despotic master, whose control is ab- 
solute over hundreds of adult men? To these immigrants he 
is the sole connection with the American world. He provides 
jobs, and takes them away at his own pleasure. The railroads 
know him and rely upon him to provide freight handlers, but 
the community know nothing of the exploitation of ignorant 
foreigners going on at their very doors. 

Clearly one of the most important socializing agencies in any 
community should be the children's court. Our survey shows 
that the children's court in Manhattan urgently needs better 
investigations on which to base court action. At present it 
cannot even take advantage of the information about families 
which is available in relief and church records. It has no con- 
nection with the schools, whereby it could be informed about 
the gangs of toughs in the neighborhood, and about the ring- 
leaders who lead the boys of the block into trouble. Often the 
judge is forced to act blindly, since he receives no proper re- 
port of the family or neighborhood situation. It is obvious 
that the work of the court could be greatly strengthened and 
improved if a probation officer specially appointed to work in 
a given district were able to report on each case with a full 
knowledge obtained from every one acquainted with the family — 
for instance, from school, church, relief agency, settlement and 
club. 

The present system of indiscriminate arrests, which often 
fails to bring into court the real ringleader, seems so unreason- 
able to the neighborhood and has aroused its antagonism so 

(528) 



No. 4] NEIGHBORHOOD SURVEYS 55 

often that the influence of the court is seriously undermined. 
The children's court in New York, which should be known in 
the community as a friend of the children, is unfortunately con- 
sidered nothing but a vague authority in league with the police, 
which arrests a boy for playing in the street as well as for more 
serious lawlessness. Its real purpose is entirely unintelligible to 
the neighborhood. 

The practical value of the social survey for any district can 
here be only briefly indicated. Turning on the light and getting 
at the facts is its contribution. It should give the diagnosis of 
the social ills and direct the remedies and treatment more intel- 
ligently. Surely there is no better way to reinvigorate the 
efforts of the leaders of the community and of all the progressive 
forces working to improve conditions. If these efforts can be 
well directed instead of working in the dark and taking the path 
of least resistance, a first step will be gained. But the survey 
should perform a still greater service ; through its new insight 
it should stimulate larger and more, constructive movements of 
social betterment than have ever before been attempted. It 
should open new vistas that lead us out of the narrow and local- 
ized life. It should enlist the best forces in the community to 
lighten the heavy toll of human suffering which poverty, igno- 
rance and neglect now exact from the overburdened workers. 

(529) 



STATISTICAL METHODS IN SURVEY WORK 

BY ROBERT EMMET CHADDOCK 
Assistant Professor of Statistics, Columbia University 

VITAL statistics serve a two-fold purpose. They show 
where to look for causes of bad health conditions, and 
they demonstrate the success or failure of remedial 
measures where applied. The record of deaths in a city, year 
by year, may show a constantly high death rate from typhoid 
fever — a rate double that of other cities of similar size. An 
examination of the city water and milk supply may reveal con- 
ditions that explain the high death rate. It may be necessary, 
however, to investigate premises in various sections of the city — 
the surface wells and drainage, the sewer connection and the 
garbage removal. The cause may finally be located in the use 
of surface wells and the lack of sewer connections. If it is 
shown that one-half or two-thirds of the families are using these 
surface wells polluted by the lack of sewer connections, it 
amounts to a demonstration to the city authorities as to the 
source of the typhoid germs. The method of prevention is 
clear, and when adopted the typhoid rate declines fifty per 
cent. This new statistical record is evidence of the success of 
the plan, and those who were obliged to make improvements 
required by law feel that the requirements were just. 

It is the purpose of this paper to emphasize the importance 
of vital statistics over smaller unit areas, and to make clearer 
the reason why we must at present depend upon special inves- 
tigations for most of our detailed information on social and 
health conditions. 

STUDIES NEEDED ON HEALTH PROBLEMS 

Our present health reports are inadequate for social purposes. 
Statistics is the bookkeeping of the public health movement. 
The head of a business firm asks of his bookkeeper more than 
a statement of general results. He wishes to know what lines 

(530) 



STATISTICAL METHODS IN SURVEY WORK 



57 



of effort have yielded the best returns and what, if any, have 
been conducted at a loss. He wishes to know the weak spots 
in his system of business administration in order that efforts 
may be concentrated at those points. Likewise, the health de- 
partment of a city should ask of its bookkeeping division what 
causes of death are increasing and what are decreasing in the 
community as a whole. But the explanation of the increase or 
decrease frequently involves a study of smaller portions of the 
community in order to discover a particular set of conditions 
operating. The department is anxious to find out what lines 
of effort are most effective in decreasing disease and saving 
lives ; what occupations are so dangerous to health as to require 
legislative interference to protect employes; in what sections 
of the city, or among what nationality, or under what sort of 
industrial and living conditions the mortality rate of infants is 
high. Does the crowding of population, as shown by the num- 
ber of persons per room, result in a higher death rate ? Do 
bad sanitation and ignorance affect the problem? What is the 
relation of pure milk supply to health? What is the effect of 
establishing milk stations? What trades are especially danger- 
ous from the point of view of tuberculosis? Is one nationality 
more susceptible to the disease than another? How do bad 
housing and ventilation affect the problem ? Is the death rate 
lower where hospitals and sanatoria have been provided for 
dangerous cases and where nursing and instruction are given in 
the home? 

At present few of these questions are adequately answered 
through the records and reports of health departments. It is 
not sufficient to give general death rates for a city or even a 
ward of a city. The divisions must be smaller so as to show 
differences in health associated with differences in housing, sani- 
tation, nationality, working conditions, and special provisions 
for pure water and milk supply. The answers are left to special 
inquiries into the housing, sanitation, milk supply and factory 
conditions of certain sections of the city, and the correlation of 
the health records with these facts. 

(53i) 



58 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

NEED FOR CORRELATION OF VITAL STATISTICS AND POPULA- 
TION STATISTICS 

In order to arrive at a measure of progress in sanitation and 
health, rates must be computed for successive periods of time. 
This cannot be done without a record of population to which 
we may relate vital statistics. It is not enough to have simply 
total population for the city or ward. It is necessary to dis- 
tinguish by sex, by age and conjugal condition and by nation- 
ality. Further, it is exceedingly desirable to have this census 
of population by smaller divisions than boroughs or wards. It 
is only by intensive study of localities having certain living and 
working conditions and certain classes of population, and by 
comparison of these localities with others having different en- 
vironmental and human conditions that we can secure the infor- 
mation on which to base a program of future social action on 
health problems. 

Before the present census it was the hope of statisticians and 
social workers that the population facts of our large cities 
would be tabulated and published by smaller tracts than wards 
or assembly districts, — for instance, by forty or eighty-acre 
areas, which would cover from eight to twenty Manhattan 
blocks. The director of the census states that the enumera- 
tions have been made for New York city by forty or eighty- 
acre tracts, but by reason of inadequate appropriation the re- 
sults cannot be published for such tracts. The publication by 
the bureau of the census will be by assembly districts only. 

The chief objection to the assembly district as a unit is that 
it is political and is, therefore, subject to change. There is no 
assurance that it will cover the same area at the next succeed- 
ing census. If it does not, we cannot compare the death and 
birth-rates for the two periods without the danger of serious 
error. Besides, we wish to know, at successive periods, the 
changes in population over the same area, the changes in nation- 
ality, in crowding, in sanitation, in living and working conditions, 
so that we may relate these changes to changes in the birth and 
death rates, accident and sickness rates, thus measuring sanitary 
and health progress. 

(532) 



No. 4I STATISTICAL METHODS IN SURVEY WORK 59 

Besides, the assembly district is too large in many cases. In 
order really to make evident relations of cause and effect in 
health problems, intensive study of the local situation is fre- 
quently the only method. It then becomes possible to apply 
remedial measures intelligently to the sanitary, housing or work- 
ing conditions. It is easy for bad conditions in water or milk 
supply or in housing and sanitation over a narrow area to ex- 
aggerate the death rate for a whole ward or assembly district. 
The remedy must be applied where the bad conditions are 
localized. 

For New York City it is possible to secure population facts for 
the smaller areas only by private initiative or at city expense. 
The Federation of Churches, under the direction of Dr. Walter 
Laidlaw, has divided the city into smaller tracts — not, however, 
of uniform size — and has sent thirteen clerks to Washington to 
secure the detailed tabulations by these areas from the schedules. 
In the division of records of the health department the vital 
statistics may be tabulated by houses, blocks, or any areas de- 
sired, but the annual health reports give most of their figures 
for the city as a whole or by boroughs, and very little of the 
detail even by wards. The next problem will be, even if Dr. 
Laidlaw succeeds in making his tabulations available for public 
use, to secure cooperation with the health and tenement-house 
departments, to have their data tabulated by the same areas in 
order that population and vital statistics may be related without 
the need of additional special tabulations from the health rec- 
ords. Thus the outlook for publication of health statistics 
useful for social purposes is not promising in New York City. 
The health reports are two years behind, the special studies 
are intermittent and lack continuity, the published facts are for 
too large areas to be most useful for social purposes, and it is 
not possible to relate them to population facts for smaller areas 
than the boroughs or assembly districts, the latter not being 
used by the health department for its tabulations. The need 
is for a research department within the bureau of records to 
study these special problems and bring together facts of popula- 
tion and facts of vital statistics in local special studies to test the 
results and efficiency of health expenditures in the past and to 

(533) 



60 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

indicate new lines of effort in protecting the public health for 
the future. 

NEED FOR PUBLICITY 

It is not enough to have a careful investigation of the causes 
of infant mortality, or of the facts as to the birth rate, or of the 
data on the prevalence of tuberculosis, or of the information 
concerning the nature and extent of industrial accidents. These 
facts must be put in convincing form and must be used to in- 
form the public. On the basis of these data public opinion 
must support or condemn policies for the conservation of 
health. The public looks in vain among the pages of the av- 
erage health report for information which will furnish con- 
vincing proof or disproof of the efficiency of past policies and 
which will guide to an intelligent shaping of future policy. The 
public needs to be informed in regard to the meaning and pur- 
pose of the work of the health department. One aim should 
be, and is, to teach the individual citizen how to protect his 
health and that of his family. This requires a weekly or monthly 
bulletin so popularized as to educate at least the leaders in the 
public health movement, *. e. t physicians, teachers, clergymen 
and social workers. The newspaper is being used to great ad- 
vantage. The graphic method is effective in reaching the eyes 
of those who will not read. 

What has been said concerning health data is largely true of 
other social facts. We know the area of the wards of a city 
and can easily calculate the density of population per acre, but 
we know comparatively little about the number of persons living 
per room and the extent of increase in room-crowding in cer- 
tain districts. The latter is the vital information for most pur- 
poses, because density per acre does not take into consideration 
the height of the tenements or the amount of space used in each 
acre for factory or commercial purposes. Furthermore, an 
average per room for a large area is of little value, because this 
may fail to show seriously overcrowded conditions in certain 
narrow localities, where overcrowding may seriously affect the 
welfare of the population. 

We may have a fairly accurate estimate of the number of in- 

(534) 



No. 4] STATISTICAL METHODS IN SURVEY WORK 6 1 

dustrial accidents in a community, and this knowledge may be 
sufficient to arouse us to action. But this is not enough knowl- 
edge upon which to base a program of prevention or compen- 
sation. It is necessary to locate the dangerous operations in 
the various industries, to know the hours and speed of work, 
the experience of the injured workers, the hour of the day when 
the most accidents occur, as well as the number of hours at 
work before the accident, the safety devices employed, the in- 
structions given, the nature and duration of disability, and other 
similar facts, before schemes of prevention and insurance can be 
intelligently worked out. We look in vain in most official re- 
ports for material upon the basis of which accident rates can be 
computed because the numbers employed in specific operations, 
in supposedly dangerous industries, are not known. A larger 
absolute number of accidents does not stamp a trade as spe- 
cially dangerous if a larger number of men is employed in that 
trade, and yet in legislation it would not be possible to uphold 
preventive legislation applied to a specific dangerous operation 
unless it could be conclusively shown that it was specially dan- 
gerous to health and safety. There is little uniformity in the 
published facts about accidents, so that comparison is impos- 
sible. We have now a movement for a uniform schedule of 
accident reporting, but we need uniform classification for pub- 
lished reports as well as uniform collections of facts. 

Statistical records often show us where to look for the causes 
of social maladjustments, as was pointed out at the beginning 
of this paper. A survey of conditions in a community and a 
careful record of the findings which can be recorded in statisti- 
cal form ought to be a useful guide in any preventive campaign. 
It is for this reason that the quantitative study of social pheno- 
mena is attracting wider and wider attention at the present time. 
But this is not the entire function of statistical data in relation 
to social problems. They are testing instruments for the 
schemes of social reform in operation. They measure the suc- 
cess or failure of a program that has been adopted. This being 
the case, it is a responsible matter to plan out a survey of com- 
munity conditions, so far as the methods to be used are con- 
cerned. The survey finds the conditions to be of a particular 

(535) 



62 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

nature at a given period. The important social question is, 
what will their nature be at a period ten years in the future? 
It is a great function of the survey to reveal actual conditions 
in order to build up public opinion by education on the great 
social responsibilities. It is an important service to hold public 
officials up to a test of their efficiency at the particular time at 
which the survey is made. But this, it would appear, is not the 
only, or even the greatest function of the survey, because those 
who are making it possible for the community to know itself 
to-day wish to furnish methods and plans by which the same 
community may keep a check on its conditions year by year, 
in the future, and thus make the knowledge a permanent 
possession. 

(536) 



THE SCOPE AND VALUE OF THE LOCAL SURVEYS 
OF THE MEN AND RELIGION MOVEMENT 

BY ORRIN G. COCKS 

Secretary of the Laity League, New York Federation of Churches 

THE last campaign of the Men and Religion Movement, 
which has touched nearly seventy-five cities of the 
country, has been held in New York city. It has had 
a five-fold method of attack : the presentation to the men of the 
churches of the need of boys' work, Bible study, missions, indi- 
vidual evangelism and social service. There is a clear recogni- 
tion of the need of effort on the part of laymen. Almost no 
attempt was made in the campaign to reach men outside the 
church. This is a refreshing point of view. It implies a feeling 
of dissatisfaction, an acknowledgment of only partial success ; 
and it involves examination of the working force. This paper 
is concerned chiefly with social service. 

It has been the custom of the social-service leaders in other 
cities to request a general survey to be taken of the social and 
religious life of the cities, on which they might base their recom- 
mendations to the men of the churches. The New York social- 
service committee, of which William Jay Schieffelin was chair- 
man, decided to make the formal survey secondary and to make 
an intimate investigation of activities peculiar in many respects 
to New York. 

The committee approached the social problems of the city 
from two standpoints. First, the names of the men from two 
hundred seventy-five or three hundred churches in Manhattan 
and the Bronx were obtained. These were presumably especi- 
ally interested in social service. In order to facilitate the 
gathering of data and to develop the neighborhood feeling, the 
city was divided into twelve districts, eight of which were in 
Manhattan and four in the Bronx. Survey blanks, dealing with 

(537) 



64 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

the institutional and social life of the church, the equipment for 
work and the methods used, the character of the community, 
and the existence of such institutions as saloons, dance halls, 
motion-picture shows, pool rooms, vaudeville houses and schools 
were sent to every man. This involved for each man careful 
personal investigation of an assigned district near his church. 
In many cases for the first time, church men made a systematic 
canvass of the social life surrounding their churches. This 
study aroused much enthusiasm among men who were socially 
inclined. For each of the twelve districts there was appointed 
a chairman, who gathered the social investigators or key-men 
together weekly for conferences. 

The survey of the district below Houston street will serve as 
an illustration of the kind of facts which were gathered : 

(a) A study of the 1 910 census for the district revealed the 
fact that there were 420,000 people below Houston street. 
These were separated by nationalities and time of arrival in the 
country. Total native whites of native parents were found to 
be only 1 7,01 1 . Some 315 ,000 persons were found to be living 
east of the Bowery and 105,000 west of the Bowery. In the 
district there were some 107,000 Italians. 

(b) It was found that the members of the Protestant churches 
amounted to a few more than 9000. Of the twenty-four 
churches, fourteen were doing social work. Eleven missions 
were found to be ministering to homeless men and sailors. An 
investigation of the attendance at ten selected churches on Palm 
Sunday morning and evening revealed the fact that there is a 
very limited group from which to draw for formal church ser- 
vices, and that the churches are forced to undertake neighbor- 
hood and institutional work for the overwhelming foreign pop- 
ulation. 

(c) A study was made of the work of the hospitals and dis- 
pensaries, both public and private, within the district. 

(d) The fifty acres of park space, with the activities carried 
on in each park, were listed ; also, the number and kinds of 
special activities carried on in public schools, both summer and 
winter. Some attempt was made to discover the completeness 
with which the district was served with fresh-air agencies. 

(538) 



No. 4] MEN AND RELIGION LOCAL SURVEYS 65 

(e) Investigation revealed the fact that there were 1379 
saloon or hotel liquor licenses below Houston street or one to 
three hundred fifty-seven inhabitants, as against one to four 
hundred forty-eight for Manhattan. Remarkable as it may 
seem, when the saloons catering to the business group are de- 
ducted, it is found that the people in the tenements are more 
abstemious than those in other parts of the city. One hundred 
and sixty pool rooms were noted, twenty-two moving-picture 
shows, forty dance halls and forty-nine theaters and vaudeville 
houses. A careful investigation was carried on of sixty-three 
lodging houses also, with a total capacity of 10,161. 

This slight summary of one interesting district will show the 
kind of facts revealed elsewhere. The completeness of the work 
varied in the twelve districts. The men representing the local 
churches were finally called together for three evenings of con- 
ference and discussion with such men as Charles Stelzle, Ray- 
mond Robins and J. L. Lansing. In these meetings, clear-cut 
and definite suggestions were made for future work by individual 
men and churches. 

The second way of approach to social problems was through 
a social-service committee. The chairman recognized the im- 
mensity of the field, the ignorance of the men of the churches, 
the newness of social service on the program of the churches 
and the importance of advice from men whose decisions would 
carry weight. He called around him fifty men who were well 
trained in some phase of social Christianity. The nucleus of the 
committee was gathered from the Laity League for Social Ser- 
vice, which for two years had been studying city problems from 
the standpoint of the men of the churches. As finally constituted, 
the committee comprised eleven of the younger and more active 
ministers, nine lawyers, two educators, ten social workers, four 
men in commercial life, two transportation specialists, two Young 
Men's Christian Association secretaries, one efficiency engineer, 
one social and religious statistician and others, all Christian men 
of large vision. 

The field for study was almost unlimited. When once a man 
recognizes that religion is a matter of the spirit and lies in the 
realm of motive, he discovers that all work is, or may become, re- 

(539) 



66 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

ligious. Instead of following the general survey outlined by 
the social-service experts of the Men and Religion Movement, 
the committee decided to devote its activities primarily to defi- 
nite studies along ten different lines. By means of a secretary 
and a corps of investigators giving their full time, in addition to 
the skilled assistance rendered by the members of the sub-com- 
mittees, the following subjects were investigated : (i) municipal 
agencies; (2) social agencies; (3) education; (4) industries 
and industrial welfare; (5) recreation and amusements; (6) 
housing and transportation; (7) health [including sex educa- 
tion] ; (8) immigration and the foreigner; (9) justice and pro- 
bation; (10) the police, with a statement on the social evil. 

The reports of the sub-committees were directed to the men 
of the churches and were intended primarily for their consider- 
ation and action. As each subject was dealt with, the results of 
the investigation were thrown into a statement, a series of reso- 
lutions and one or more recommendations. Although the field 
was by no means covered, these recommendations in the ten 
lines totaled about one hundred eighty. 

In every case the chairmen of the sub-committees and their 
co-workers adopted the method of complete cooperation with 
the skilled social, industrial, legal or municipal agencies that 
were covering the subjects investigated. The committee was 
unanimous in feeling that the period of independent work is 
past and that success is dependent on complete cooperation of 
all efficient agencies. This might be made clearer by saying 
that the committee consulted with fully five hundred indi- 
viduals, — city department heads, social agencies and private 
experts. 

Below will be found a short summary of the recommenda- 
tions of several of the sub-committees : 

Recreation and amusements. (1) Urge all church men to 
cooperate with the public recreation commission. (2) Estab- 
lish dancing in church houses. Encourage dancing in Young 
Men's Christian Association buildings. Regularly inspect pub- 
lic dance halls. Close up those that are disorderly or immoral. 
(3) Support the ordinance governing the motion-picture shows. 
Form a group to commend good plays and to reform or sup- 

(540) 



No. 4] MEN AND RELIGION LOCAL SURVEYS 67 

press theaters offending public morality. (4) Assist in reduc- 
ing to the minimum excursion boats maintaining state rooms or 
selling liquor. (5) Use church houses more generally for re- 
creation. Maintain more vacation schools in churches and 
public schools. Urge larger appropriations for this department 
from the board of education. (6) Introduce pool and billiard 
parlors in the churches. Support an ordinance closing public 
parlors at a reasonable hour and exercise the supervision of 
such games in the neighborhood of churches. (7) Urge the 
establishment of well managed and wholesome public amuse- 
ment parks. 

Industries and industrial welfare. ( 1 ) Develop cordial co- 
operation between the trade-union locals and the Federation of 
Labor men and the men of the churches. (2) Support a state 
bill for one day's rest in every seven. Take an advanced posi- 
tion on the physical surroundings of labor, fire hazards in lofts 
and factories, and safety appliances. (3) Become intelligent 
on the question of "home work" and the wisest method of 
meeting this situation. Let it be understood that the church 
men understand and are opposed to child labor or harmful labor 
of women. (4) Support enlightened laws upon employers' 
liability and workmen's compensation. (5) Study the preferen- 
tial shop as a sensible method of avoiding trouble between em- 
ployers and trade unions. (6) Urge the proper study of the 
pushcart situation and the possible establishment of city markets. 
(7) Propose the larger use of the state and federal employ- 
ment bureaus for removing excess labor from the cities to parts 
of the country where the need for labor is great. 

Social agencies. (1 ) Urge church men to attempt to under- 
stand local and national social conditions and to make regular 
study of progress. (2) Become volunteer social workers where 
the need is great. Encourage individual churches to relieve 
their own poor, but to do this in cooperation with other agencies 
in the districts. (3) Support a confidential exchange of infor- 
mation regarding needy people to avoid overlapping. Assist in 
furnishing facilities for tubercular cases. (4) Lay upon the city 
the burden of the care of homeless men and support the re- 
quest for a farm colony for vagrants. (5) Provide permanent 

(54i) 



68 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

custodial care for the feeble-minded. This will serve to. illus- 
trate the kind of work that was done. 

Much enthusiasm was engendered, which culminated in the 
campaign. Thoughtful workers, however, realize that this is 
but the beginning. The work of conservation is far more im- 
portant. This subject has had the thoughtful attention of the 
committee. They recognize that the work of obtaining perma- 
nent results will be slow. The organization to handle such 
work, however, must be of an interdenominational character 
which will command the respect and support of the laymen of 
all denominations. Since social service is involved in no way 
with doctrinal questions, there is no reason why such an inter- 
denominational group, working for social betterment and dom- 
inated by the religious motive, should not include the Catholic 
laymen and the Jews. Luckily such an agency has been in ex- 
istence in New York long enough to test itself. 

The leaders of the churches recognize that the church, as a 
church, cannot commit itself to social, philanthropic, civic, san- 
itary or penal work. The function of the church is to inspire. 
The organization formed by the combination of individuals ex- 
ists primarily to bring men into relationship with God irre- 
spective of their political, social or philosophical opinions. All 
recognize, however, that inspiration must find its expression in 
action. Every man who has learned the value of clean living, 
love of God and love of his fellows must work these out in his 
life, otherwise his religion is a travesty. His definite line of 
work, apart from his business of obtaining the necessities of life, 
will depend largely upon his interests and his ability. No two 
men can be expected to work out their religious conviction in 
the same way. 

There exist also in the Protestant churches organizations, 
leagues or brotherhoods of men which have been formed for 
social purposes. Although the church may not take action as 
a unit, these men's organizations, as well as individual men, may 
support certain convictions and assume certain positions in 
society. These brotherhoods have already discovered that it is 
essential to work upon problems external to the life of the in- 
dividual and the church if they are to preserve life. The pro- 

(542) 



No. 4] MEN AND RELIGION LOCAL SURVEYS 69 

posals of the five departments of the Men and Religion Move- 
ment come as a godsend to these agencies of the Protestant 
churches. 

The organization of conservation will be a thoroughly demo- 
cratic one. Care will be used in its membership. The fairest- 
minded men of executive ability, who will command the respect 
of laymen throughout the city, will serve as the representatives 
of the men of the church. They will select activities requiring 
action and will bring them directly to the attention of the men 
in the local churches. They will seek the opinions and support 
of such men and will request their cooperation until results are 
obtained. 

A situation has developed in New York which requires care- 
ful attention. The city has been found to be so large that it is 
impossible to draw together the church and the social workers 
for satisfactory action for all the boroughs or even for one 
borough. Local neighborhood groups have been formed or 
are in process of formation in several parts of the city. Believ- 
ing heartily in cooperation, the conservation agency must take 
into consideration these intensely loyal groups of religious and 
social workers and must attempt a thorough fusion of workers 
for local and neighborhood betterment. There is little doubt 
that such neighborhood groups will rapidly develop into organ- 
izations with an intelligent comprehension of city-wide problems. 

The Men and Religion campaign has accomplished the im- 
possible. In one short year it has convinced the Protestant 
churches throughout the country that their mission is not only 
individual but social as well. It has welcomed into its ranks as 
thoroughly orthodox those social workers who have insisted 
upon the social application of the gospel and who have hereto- 
fore been regarded as heretical. It has convinced the men of 
the churches of their essential narrowness and has led them, 
with due humility, to link themselves with social workers. 

The progress of the conservation of the work of the New 
York Men and Religion campaign must necessarily be slow. 
The men of the churches, both lay and clerical, are ignorant. 
They have called too many things common and unclean. They 
have been dominated by individualism. No one campaign, 

(543) 



JO ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

however effective it may be, can accomplish the conversion and 
the education of the mass of laymen. The important result of 
the campaign is a change in the point of view. The work of 
training will come in due time. Without doubt, individual men 
and individual laymen's groups in various parts of the city will 
take up actively and effectively throughout the coming months 
those parts of the program outlined by the social-service com- 
mittee which appeal to the more active of their members. 

(544) 



A FEDERAL COMMISSION ON INDUSTRIAL RELA- 
TIONS—WHY IT IS NEEDED 

JOHN B. CLARK 

Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University 

THE most critical issues pending in modern states are those 
between employers and employed, and in our own coun- 
try they are coming to have an overshadowing import- 
ance. This is because the nation is democratic and is becoming 
more and more industrial, and the demand is insistently made 
that the voting power be used to improve the laborer's economic 
status. 

How much a government can do in promoting the settlement 
of the wages problem can be known only after rather long ex- 
perimenting; but it is clear that in any case the problem must 
be settled by some action on the part of the people. If the 
manner of settlement is right, we can count on prosperity, 
peace, and at least an approach to contentment; if it is wrong, 
there will be embitterment and serious peril ; while so long as 
there is no settlement at all, industry will go haltingly, classes 
will be increasingly antagonistic, and the government will have 
no basis for a permanent policy. Law-making will yield to 
whatever pressure is for the moment the strongest. 

No one can guarantee that a commission will be able to an- 
swer, once for all, the questions that chiefly perplex us, but it 
should be able to do much in that direction, and at least put us 
in the way of getting the answers we seek. Some of the most 
essential facts are not now known. No one can positively tell 
how great the income is which has to be divided between em- 
ployers and employed. Statistics of income have never been 
made complete, but a commission can make the most of what 
figures there are and it can obtain more. Moreover, testing, 
collecting and arranging figures will be a service of the highest 
value, and a commission which has the confidence of the public 

(545) 



72 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

will be able to prepare statistical material which is fit to be the 
basis of public and private action. 

Some facts which are needed have to do with the difficulties 
inherent in the industrial system, and others with experiments 
already tried for dealing with them. There is a long chapter of 
attempts made in our own states and in foreign countries to 
make employer and men more like partners and less like enemies. 
It is necessary to know how much each one of these efforts has 
accomplished. 

The supreme question is a moral one. Is labor generally 
getting its due? A belief in some quarters that it is not, ex- 
plains the embittermentof the once cordial relations of employer 
and employe. If there is any way of knowing in what part of 
the system labor gets all that is due to it and in what parts it 
gets less, and if there is any way of ascertaining what prevent- 
able causes stand in the way of justice, that discovery should be 
rated as in the first rank of discoveries making for the improve- 
ment of mankind. A belief that the laborer is wronged and 
that he will never get justice without a revolution accounts for 
the growth of the dangerous parties that constitute the extreme 
left of the labor movement. A belief that much can be done 
without revolution — that reforms will work well and revolution 
extremely ill for the workers themselves — accounts for the 
earnest constructive work to which a great majority of citizens 
are committed. We need therefore an authorized list of such 
reforms as can claim immediate support. 

There are many things we need to be sure of in connection 
with the policy of reform. Some efforts to change the terms 
of distribution in favor of the workers react badly on the 
amount to be divided. Strikes and lockouts do so, and so does 
the policy which organized labor sometimes adopts, of reduc- 
ing its own efficiency — the so-called " ca' canny " of the English 
trade-unionist. Different in its working, but closely connected 
with these measures on the part of the workers, is the em- 
ployer's effort to reduce the output of his own mills and of other 
mills of like kind, for the sake of exacting higher prices from 
the community. If we can stop all such efforts, how much will 
society gain and what part of the gain will fall to the laborer? 

(546) 



No. 4] COMMISSION ON INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 73 

Of course there will be more to be divided, but how can we 
cause the excess to be shared fairly? 

In so far as the laborers' plan of limiting the number of 
pieces they can turn out is concerned, that appears, on its face, 
to be an absurdity. How can any one expect to make his 
wages greater by making his product smaller? And yet this 
plan of action has some motive. There must be a way in 
which, during a limited time and for a limited number of persons, 
it may do something which, in their view, is rational. The 
whole evolution that has led to such tactics should be examined 
and, in the light of history, statistics and economic principles, 
a reasonable plan of action should be determined. 

Even the basic question of the justice and the utility of the 
organization of labor is here and there called in question. This 
means more than the rightfulness of particular things that trade 
unionists do ; it concerns the principle of trade unionism, rather 
than the practises which have grown up under it. If there were 
any real doubt as to the necessity and the justice of organizing 
laborers for collective action, that question would easily take 
the first rank in importance. There is no real uncertainty, 
however, as to this fundamental point, but there is actual danger 
that, in taking ground against the violent measures of some 
unions, even reasonable men may range themselves against the 
principle of union ; and they will do so more and more as the 
opinion gains ground that strikes are useless without violence. 

Can labor get on without actual strikes? How far can strikes, 
when they occur, succeed without violence? Is there any 
danger that a rigorous enforcement of law, without tribunals of 
arbitration for the settlement of wage questions, will leave 
laborers helpless in their employers' hands? On the other 
hand, is there danger that no enforcement or a lax enforcement 
of the law for protecting persons and property would make the 
employers comparatively helpless and invite anarchy in every 
great industrial center? 

Sad indeed would be a state in which peaceful strikes would 
lead to starving the workers and violent ones would destroy the 
social order. Verily, it is a choice between the devil and the 
deep sea ! But fortunately there is an alternative. Suc- 

(547) 



74 



ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 



cessful arbitration may both preserve order and do justice. 
Recent history records a long series of possible measures aim- 
ing to secure the laborer against exploitation, and the employer 
and the non-union worker from the various forms of sabotage. 
There are conciliation, arbitration by committees created by 
the contestants, each for a particular dispute, and arbitration 
by permanent tribunals. There is adjudication having no 
coercive power, and taking place only as a tribunal is invoked 
by one or both contestants, and there is the same kind of ad- 
judication which acts on its own initiative, though still without 
power to enforce its decisions. There are tribunals that have 
full coercive power, since they can fortify their decisions by 
fines or other penalties for those who refuse to accept them. 
There is a plan which requires no formal coercion, but invokes 
a very real power when it publishes a decision. It investigates 
the claims of workmen, announces a just rate of pay and merely 
relies on a stern repression of disorder in case the rate is re- 
fused. Workers who then refuse a really just rate are not able 
to carry their point by " slugging " the men who accept it. 

There is much more to be investigated and it is clear that the 
field of inquiry is enormously large. That many studies and 
fruitful ones have been made in this domain is no reason for 
opposing the creation of a commission. It can serve as a com- 
petent jury to weigh the arguments of those who have already 
put their conclusions on record. The mass of literature on this 
subject is so vast that no one reads the whole of it, and many 
valuable parts of it reach very few persons. If a commission 
makes the most of the studies of the past, if it summarizes con- 
clusions and weighs the arguments in favor of them, its reports 
should be very illuminating to the general public. Even a 
small measure of success in so a vast an undertaking would be 
a sufficient reward for the labor and the outlay it would cost. 
It might easily open a vista leading to a state of future peace, 
comfort and justice, gained without an overthrow of the social 
order followed by a more than doubtful effort to build a new 
one. 

(548) 



LABOR LEGISLATION A NATIONAL SOCIAL NEED r 

HENRY R. SEAGER 

Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University 

AS preparation for discussing another's paper, it is but pru- 
dent to have read it or at least to have heard it. Un- 
fortunately, I have been prevented from either reading 
or hearing the papers to which you have just listened. This 
gives me an excuse, of which I am glad to avail myself, for in- 
terpreting the invitation of the Academy to discuss the topic of 
the morning as an invitation to point out still another national 
social need. 

The national social need with which I am most impressed just 
now is labor legislation. This need and the efforts the Amer- 
ican Association for Labor Legislation and other organizations 
are making to meet it ought to be made articulate before this 
audience. 

An excellent illustration of the circumstances that call for 
national labor legislation is the use of poisonous phosphorus in 
the match industry, which has just been made subject to a pro- 
hibitive tax by act of Congress. White or yellow phosphorus, 
the poisonous form that is commonly used in the manufacture 
of American matches, happens to be somewhat cheaper than 
sesqui-sulphide or any of the other non-poisonous forms of 
phosphorus which might be substituted. It happens also that 
the poisonous, double-dip, phosphorus match is a little better 
match from the point of view of ready ignition than any non- 
poisonous match that has yet been made. In fact, it ignites so 
readily that its presence in the community is a frequent cause 
of destructive fires. (The Bureau of Fire Protection in New 
York city has been so impressed with the danger in connection 
with poisonous phosphorus matches that it has prohibited the 
sale or use of such matches in New York city after January I , 

1 Discussion at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 19, 1912. 

(549) 



76 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

191 3, simply and solely as a means of fire protection.) Be- 
cause it is a little cheaper, and a little better, the poisonous 
phosphorus match has continued to be manufactured in the 
United States ; not because American match manufacturers are 
so inhuman as to desire to expose their workers to the risk of 
the terrible disease called " phossy jaw," but because competition 
left them no choice if they were to hold their own in competi- 
tive markets. They might, of course, have agreed unanimously 
to discontinue the use of poisonous phosphorus, but it illus- 
trates the anomalous condition of our law, that such an agree- 
ment, if entered into, would almost certainly have fallen under 
the condemnation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Moreover, 
there was at least one manufacturer who denied the existence of 
the danger of " phossy jaw " and who could not have been per- 
suaded to give up the use of poisonous phosphorus unless com- 
pelled to do so by law. 

In this country, the first thought when confronted with an 
industrial poison of this sort, for which substitutes almost as 
cheap and almost as good are available, is that the prohibition 
of the use of the poison should be secured through state legis- 
lation. But the same circumstances that compel the well- 
meaning manufacturer to meet the conditions set by his less 
scrupulous competitor virtually compel the well-meaning state 
to make its labor legislation as lenient as that of its less advanced 
neighbor with which its industries may be in competition. The 
half dozen states in which the match-manufacturing industry is 
carried on could not individually prohibit the use of poisonous 
phosphorus by their manufacturers, without running the risk of 
driving out an important state industry. For a situation of this 
kind, uniform regulations applying to all manufacturers through- 
out the United States offer the only satisfactory solution. 

Under the constitution of the United States, Congress has 
the power to deal with this evil by means of a prohibitive tax, 
or by means of the prohibition of interstate and foreign com- 
merce in the poisonous phosphorus matches. The second 
remedy was believed to be inadequate to the situation, since it 
would not prevent the manufacture and sale of poisonous phos- 
phorus matches within the limits of any state. For this reason 

(55o) 



No. 4] NATIONAL LABOR LEGISLATION 77 

the American Association for Labor Legislation decided to urge 
upon Congress the first remedy, a prohibitive tax. To this 
plan, although opposed by only one of the match manu- 
facturers, grave constitutional objection was made. It was held 
by Judge Underwood and by several other of the most enlight- 
ened members of Congress that to use the taxing power to put 
an end to a domestic industry, rather than to secure revenue 
for the federal government, was a perversion of this power 
which, though permitted under numerous decisions of the 
federal courts, was yet improper for Congress to exercise. The 
conclusive answer to this objection seems to me to be that a 
broad construction of our written constitution is essential to the 
orderly conduct of government and the efficient adaptation of 
our legal machinery to the changing requirements of our indus- 
trial and social life. In conferring upon Congress the taxing 
power, the framers of the constitution conferred that power 
without any limitations as to its exercise. Repeatedly, the 
courts have upheld as valid an exercise of that power designed 
to regulate and even to prohibit imports or domestic transactions. 
Where the need of prohibition through national legislation can 
be clearly demonstrated, as in this case, the objection that the 
taxing power was not intended for this purpose seems to me 
academic. This was the view finally taken by the great majority 
of the members of Congress after the matter had been clearly 
presented to them in all its bearings. In the House, Judge 
Underwood, who spoke strongly against the bill before the vote 
was taken, was able to carry only twenty-nine of his colleagues, 
so loyal to his leadership in connection with most legislative 
proposals, along with him. On the Republican side, Mr. Mann, 
the Republican leader, was the only one to have his vote 
recorded against the bill. In the Senate, notwithstanding the 
customary opposition of Senator Bailey, the bill went through 
by viva voce vote. 

The situation presented by poisonous phosphorus matches 
was no doubt unique, and yet the same general conditions which 
made national legislation desirable in this case already present 
themselves in a number of other cases that will certainly be 
pressed upon the attention of Congress as time goes on. Con- 

(55i) 



78 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

sider, for example, the situation with reference to the twelve- 
hour day in American steel mills. Employes working on the 
twelve-hour system are engaged in continuous processes. This 
means that the only practical alternative to the twelve-hour 
shift is the eight-hour shift. The steel-mill owners contend, 
and with seeming truth, that they cannot change from the 
twelve-hour day to the eight-hour day without making some 
reduction in wages. They cannot, that is, unless all of them 
make the change together. In this industry, labor organizations 
which might be looked to to secure a uniform work-day for the 
employes of different employers have been largely eliminated. 
The consequence is that this change, so vital to thousands of 
American wage-earners and their families, can only be made 
voluntarily by the employers or through legislative interference. 
I do not wish to go so far as to urge that the time is ripe for 
national legislation to deal with this situation. I do contend, 
however, that state legislation is inadequate to deal with it, 
because competing steel mills are situated in different states, 
and it is unreasonable to ask one state to impose this handicap 
on an important domestic industry when in other states no such 
restriction is found. 

Or take another example. The coal-mining industry is car- 
ried on in many different states, under highly competitive con- 
ditions. This is one of the most dangerous industries in the 
country. State regulations looking toward the elimination of 
unsafe conditions and greater regard to the life and health of 
mine-workers have proved quite ineffective. More has been 
accomplished within a few years by the National Bureau of 
Mines, attacking the problem on a national scale and relying 
entirely on voluntary appeals to mine-owners and mine-workers 
to cooperate in lessening accident risks than by all state regula- 
tions taken together. At the meeting of the American Asso- 
ciation for Labor Legislation held at Washington last December, 
the proposal was made that a Federal Mining Commission be 
substituted for the Bureau of Mines, and that this commission be 
empowered to prescribe conditions of safe mining which must be 
complied with by all operators of mines in the United States, as a 
condition to having their products transhipped across state lines. 

(552) 



No. 4] NATIONAL LABOR LEGISLATION 79 

This is, of course, a very advanced proposal and many conside- 
rations might be urged against it until, through the voluntary 
work of the Bureau of Mines, we have fuller knowledge than we 
yet possess as to the safety conditions that might reasonably be 
prescribed. That such a plan, however, will in the compara- 
tively near future be urged upon Congress as a practical and 
desirable policy, can hardly be doubted, and when it is brought 
forward as a practical proposal, shall we not all have to agree 
that here too national labor legislation is needed to afford to 
the wage-earners of the country the protection to which they 
are entitled under a humane and progressive government? 

I might enumerate other examples. The need of a uniform 
child-labor law, imposing minimum requirements on all the in- 
dustries of all the states, has already been urged upon Congress 
in the so-called Beveridge Bill and will undoubtedly continue to 
be a political issue. In fact, wherever the case in favor of the 
regulation of labor conditions by law can be clearly and con- 
vincingly established to the satisfaction of the great majority of 
our citizens, the practical and effective method of legislation 
will usually be found to be national legislation. Through use 
of the taxing power and the power to regulate interstate and 
foreign commerce, Congress may as rapidly as it chooses impose 
regulations on our important national industries. The thought 
I wish to emphasize is, that as our industries become more and 
more national, transcending state lines in their operations, and 
as our knowledge in regard to the regulations that ought to 
be imposed becomes better, national labor legislation com- 
parable with the national labor legislation of the United King- 
dom, Germany and the other progressive countries of Europe 
will be more and more a great national need. 

(553) 



NEXT STEPS IN THE CHILD LABOR CAMPAIGN 1 

OWEN R. LOVEJOY 

Secretary National Child Labor Committee 

FROM the national point of view, the first important question 
regarding child labor is, how much is there in America? 
There is more than ever at any one time in any other 
nation of the western world. There are no comprehensive sta- 
tistics later than those of 1900, which showed 1,750,180 work- 
ing children between 10 and 15 years of age. 

Second, we want to know why we have child labor. This 
question would lead us to a consideration of problems of pov- 
erty, ignorance, self-interest of employers as well as of parents, 
and lack of constructive opportunities to fill in the otherwise 
vacuous life of many young people. Of persons directly re- 
sponsible there are three classes : employers, parents and chil- 
dren. Of course the majority of all these three classes are 
opposed to child labor ; but so far as it has supporters they be- 
long ordinarily to these three groups. 

In the third place, we need analysis and discrimination. Not 
all kinds of child labor are bad. We have no objection to a boy 
of fifteen years working eight hours a day at a good trade which 
offers a fair wage and gives a chance for advancement ; but we 
do believe that, despite all efforts to make work beautiful, there 
is no way in which we can so idealize and beautify a ten-hour 
day in a factory for a fourteen-year-old child as to make the two 
elements harmonize. We believe girls ought to learn to sweep 
and take care of the baby, to wash dishes so constructively that 
they can be washed again, to prepare food and serve it, to prac- 
tise all these household arts and many other arts ; and these 
tasks ought to be made beautiful. Some of them do mean hard 
work, but they can be so filled with significance that they will 

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 19, 1912. 

(554) 



THE CHILD LABOR CAMPAIGN 8 1 

attract the girl. Regardless of so-called social classes, every 
child should learn at the earliest possible age the dignity and 
honor, as well as necessity, of hard work; but we must draw a 
line somewhere, a line which is necessary partly on physiolog- 
ical and partly on psychological grounds. We may develop 
a wholesome relation of the child to education or to household 
duties, but there is no relationship that can be made wholesome 
between a twelve-year-old girl and a cotton-spinning frame for 
twelve hours a day or twelve hours a night, however we adjust 
it or attempt to idealize that spinning frame or cotton mill, and 
however we talk about its beautiful lights flashing through the 
darkness, and the luxurious hum of its perfectly-adjusted ma- 
chinery, and the high colors of the fabrics being woven by the 
machinery. When we try to adjust a twelve-year-old girl to it 
we prostitute the divine element in that girl's nature. So there 
are certain lines of a so-called repressive nature, whether we may 
have any constructive opportunities for a twelve-year-old child 
or not; whether or not we can provide a campfire or industrial 
training or a well-ventilated schoolhouse. I protest that idle- 
ness, broken by such exercise and activities as the child will dis- 
cover for himself if they are not provided for him, is better for 
a twelve-year-old child than a twelve-hour day in a mine, a 
cotton mill, a glass factory, a sweatshop or one of the ordinary 
street trades, which are considered by careful students of the 
problem the most injurious of all child occupations. Therefore, 
we need discrimination. 

In analyzing and breaking up the problem we find we also 
break up the army of people opposed to child labor; this offers 
a difficult problem to the constructive student of this social 
question. For example, no right-minded citizen will say he 
believes in child labor. It is only when you break up your 
problem into its constituent elements that you begin to lose 
your adherents. The cotton manufacturer thinks the coal oper- 
ator inexcusable for allowing little breaker-boys ten, twelve or 
fourteen years old to bend over nine hours a day picking slate. 
He would not do it. But he knows that the boys and girls who 
have come down from the mountains of the South, and thus 
escaped the ravages of the hookworm, are immeasurably blessed 

(555) 



82 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

by working ten or twelve hours a day or night in his cotton 
mill. In the same way the coal operator would not be guilty of 
employing little boys every night every other week in the glass 
factory ; that is intolerable. But it is all right to let these little 
Polish and Italian boys bend over the coal chute, because they 
are foreigners, anyway — and besides, coal cannot be mined 
without them. The preachers in the coal regions are all op- 
posed to the iniquity of employing little boys in the coal break- 
ers, are they not? No, to the iniquity of Sunday base ball; 
that is their text. 

The glass manufacturer is sure the cotton manufacturer and 
the coal operator are exploiters, but that a boy employed at 
the feet of the glass blower is getting the best kind of industrial 
training, and therefore child labor in the glass house is a social 
benefit. So the newspaper men are all against child labor, but 
not against the child laborer carrying papers on the streets. 
The farmers are against it, but not on the farm. The people 
in this city are all opposed to child labor, but suppose you try 
to put an end to the employment of children in perhaps 13,000 
or 15,000 homes in New York city, in the kinds of home work 
now absolutely beyond the scope of law. No matter how 
watertight we try to make the law, no matter how many in- 
spectors we appoint, it is absolutely impossible to regulate home 
work so long as we have families employed in their homes in 
making articles for commerce. Child labor cannot be regu- 
lated. But suppose you pass a law to put an end to that — do 
you think the people of New York would stand for such pro- 
tection of the children? They would immediately tell you that 
you will starve some poor widow. So we break up our army ; 
we lose our friends. 

In the fourth place, we must study the social effects of child 
labor, and I have not time to do more than indicate them. As 
to health, we know from the few scattered reports that child 
laborers are more often injured by industrial occupations than 
adults. 

The effect on education we know. The two are incompatible. 
Where child labor thrives education declines. When measures 
are taken that put an effective restriction upon child labor, 

(556) 



No. 4] THE CHILD LABOR CAMPAIGN %^ 

education advances. A few years ago we were told by the 
southern cotton manufacturers that it was not necessary to have 
inspectors, because no child could be employed legally under 
twelve years of age, and because they had a gentlemen's agree- 
ment to obey that law. Finally a factory inspector was ap- 
pointed for South Carolina, and in the first three months he 
took out of the cotton mills of the state more than fifteen hun- 
dred little boys and girls illegally employed. That was only 
an incidental benefit of his work. The real constructive work 
is that there has been an epidemic of schoolhouse building in 
South Carolina ever since. 

What of the effect on morals? If I had time to debate the 
old proposition that " Satan finds some mischief still for idle 
hands to do," I would show you that a larger proportion of 
working children get into the toils of the law than of so- 
called idle children, who are getting an education and having 
fun. These latter children escape arrest, escape the reform- 
atory, escape the juvenile court, because their lives are filled 
with the imaginative, with the constructive, with the beautiful 
of which Dr. Gulick has spoken. We ought to have more of 
these things. I should like every child in the country decorated 
with a garland about the brow, to show that we still maintain 
the faith that every child bears the divine image. We need 
that. But the children who go into the factories and sweatshops 
and street trades are the children who fall below the moral level 
and get into trouble. 

We need also to study the effect of child labor upon our 
standards of living and wages. We need to learn how far the 
competition of the ignorant, inefficient child breaks down the 
standards of wages and family income. The connection is defi- 
nite and direct, as can be amply proved. 

In the fifth place, we need agencies and equipment to handle 
these specific problems. I am not one of those critics of the 
church who argue that every church ought to become a body 
of investigators and agitators to remove these specific abuses. 
A church of fifteen hundred members cannot constitute itself 
an investigation committee on child welfare in its community. 
It is not trained for it. W T hen my plumbing is out of order I 

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84 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

send for a trained plumber. We have a committee organized 
to handle these detailed questions that require expert training 
and to act as agent for the church. What we want of the 
church and all other religious, moral and social organizations, 
is the moral and financial support to help do the work. 

We need specific agents for investigation and for drafting 
laws. The average citizen does not know how to draft any kind 
of a law ; that task needs training. We need men trained in 
promoting legislation and many other specific tasks which re- 
quire special training. 

We need to study efficient administration. I have a letter 
from a man in Massachusetts saying, " The factory inspectors 
in this community are old soldiers, and the truant officers are 
janitors, and the whole child-labor law and compulsory educa- 
tion law in this town are jokes." Similar complaints come from 
all parts of the country. We need to study that situation and 
find how extensive it is. There is no use simply getting good 
laws on our statute books. If we need good laws we need yet 
more their careful, efficient, systematic enforcement. 

We need also the arousing of public sentiment, through 
speeches, newspapers, magazines, and all agencies of publicity. 
This is shown by the complete victory that has just come after 
a five-years' campaign on the part of the National Child Labor 
Committee to get the federal government to establish a chil- 
dren's bureau. After that bill was drafted, nearly six years ago, 
the National Child Labor Committee took it up, and we have 
been agitating for it ever since. Finding that general agitation 
did very little good, we placed a lobbyist in Washington and 
kept him there for four years, canvassing every man who came 
to Washington and finding what support we could get. We 
drew into this campaign churches, women's clubs, manufac- 
turers' associations, labor unions and other organizations that 
have reached an immensely larger public than we could reach, 
and an aroused public interest carried the bill through. The 
children's bureau has been established, and day before yester- 
day the President appointed the best man in America as its 
chief — Miss Julia C. Lathrop. Our victory is won. We have 
tried to secure better laws in the different states, and during the 

(558) 



No. 4] THE CHILD LABOR CAMPAIGN 85 

past eight years thirty-eight states have strengthened their laws, 
no less than thirty legislating last year. 

We must cooperate with all other special agencies for child 
welfare. We can cooperate with the Campfire Girls and the Boy 
Scouts, the Playground Association and the vocational guidance 
workers, for it is all one problem. Though we cannot separate 
the problem into its constituent elements, each group of workers 
must push its own part of the task and do it by special and well- 
directed effort. 

(559) 



BUDGETARY PROVISION FOR SOCIAL NEEDS 1 

WILLIAM H. ALLEN 
Director New York Bureau of Municipal Research 

THREE momentous budgetary opportunities now confront 
social workers : the national budget's provision for 
economy and efficiency ; the New York city budget esti- 
mates for 191 3; and the congressional bill for chartering the 
Rockefeller Foundation. Each of these opportunities typifies a 
condition which prevails throughout the country ; i. e. y our vision 
of social needs has far^outstripped our means and our habit of 
cooperating to meet these needs. A few minutes given by 
social workers in April 19 12 to these three opportunities 
would do more good than millions of dollars and hundreds of 
mass meetings given to the same subjects next December. 

The same change is needed to give to the Rockefeller 
Foundation bill the united aggressive support of social workers 
and givers as is needed to arouse them to the aggravation of 
social needs which must follow neglect to register the judgment 
of social workers in favor of the other two enormous possible 
benefactions above mentioned : (a) the national efficiency and 
economy program and (b) an adequate budget for meeting 
New York city's social needs in 191 3. 

There is hardly a social agency in the United States that 
aims at efficiency that has not tried to secure support from 
Mr. Rockefeller. Colleges, charities, voters' leagues, hospitals, 
settlements, churches — one and all are to be found among Mr. 
Rockefeller's regularJ:*correspondents. One and all are offered 
now, through a bill to charter the Rockefeller Foundation, 
joint responsibility for spending a fund of at least one million, 
perhaps five million dollars a year. The deed of gift says in 
effect : " We want this money used for public welfare. There 
is no restriction upon its use except that it shall be for the 

'Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 1912. 

(56o) 



BUDGETARY PROVISION FOR SOCIAL NEEDS 87 

public welfare. We want it spent according to the best-informed 
suggestion and most enlightened criticism of those familiar with 
social needs." 

Yet so unaccustomed are we to thinking about our work in 
terms of the way government does its business that we have 
not in this matter of the Rockefeller Foundation connected our 
judgment and wishes with the national machinery necessary 
to give them effect. I mean that we have not let Congress know 
that we believe it should pass this act of incorporation, and 
that we want such passing done in the name of human welfare 
and not as a courtesy to Mr. Rockefeller and the distinguished 
legislators who sponsor the bill. If you can explain why you 
and I have not spent two cents and ten minutes writing our 
opinion to our congressman or senator in support of this huge 
welfare fund, I can explain why so many of us overlook other 
budgetary opportunities. 

A second great opportunity which most of us will lose relates 
to an item of $200,000 which Congress has been asked to insert 
in its budget for next year for continuing the work of the 
President's commission on economy and efficiency. No one 
doubts that more efficiency and more economy are needed in 
national departments. Everyone concedes that millions upon 
millions could be saved whether or not Senator Aldrich over- 
estimated the present waste when he said he could save $300,- 
000,000 a year if given an opportunity to put efficiency methods 
at work in national departments. Nobody denies that the 
efficiency work which began two years ago under the direction 
of Dr. F. A. Cleveland, chairman of the President's commission, 
has already saved many times its cost and has laid the basis for 
saving millions next year. 

Yet practically without protest from the social-worker clan, 
the majority in Congress actually proposes to cut out the $200,- 
000 necessary to cure the disease of incompetence in national 
business which these days does infinitely more harm than small- 
pox or cholera. Men learned in the laws of political psychology 
talk wisely of what the people want and do not want, and say : 
" If we cut out the $200,000, the masses are simple enough to 
give us credit for a saving of $200,000. If we leave it in, the 

(561) 



88 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

masses will see the $200,000 with big eyes and will give us no 
credit for our intended saving of millions." Just think of its 
being possible in April 19 12 for such assertions to go unchal- 
lenged by the very group which best of all in the country per- 
haps is able to picture what one million or five millions or ten 
millions a year will buy if spent in meeting social needs. Think 
of what even one million dollars a year spent efficiently by the 
national government on education and health would do to 
reduce the call for local charities and corrections, hospitals and 
the like. 

There is still time for social workers and philanthropists to 
secure letters to congressmen and representatives, and to interest 
editors, commercial bodies and city clubs in making it under- 
stood that this national budgetary provision of $200,000 for 
efficiency in spending a billion dollars a year is an urgent need 
for every locality and every kind of uplift work. 

The commission's studies relating to processes, organization, 
personnel and supplies have already specifically located op- 
portunities to save millions as follows: $1,000,000 can be saved 
by omitting needless steps in handling mail; $250,000 can be 
saved by using window envelopes; $100,000 by using multi- 
graph processes; $50,000 by discontinuing the affidavits ap- 
pended to personal expense vouchers; $500,000 by merely 
securing the usual reductions in purchasing railroad tickets, as 
by return trips ; millions by standardizing 20,000 supply items ; 
by extending (from 9,000 items before standardization to 30,000 
after) the standardizing of supplies, specifications, contracts and 
method of inspection ; millions more by consolidation of related 
service. 

$200,000 is needed next year : 

a. To retain intact the group of experts who have been slowly 
gathered with congressional approval during the last two years, 
who are now practised in " team-work," and whose dispersal 
would be a grievous loss to the nation. 

b. To utilize facts already collected through expenditure of 
the former appropriation of $200,000 and through the collabo- 
ration of fully 2,000 employes and officials who have been 
brought to cooperate with the commission. 

(562) 



No. 4] BUDGETARY PROVISION FOR SOCIAL NEEDS 89 

c. To utilize also facts that are in rapid process of collection 
through improved methods of accounting and reporting already 
installed as the result of this efficiency work. 

d. To assist department and division heads in the administra- 
tive improvements declared by all to be necessary. 

Congress has already been urged by three special messages 
to give the efficiency work unanimous non-political, non-par- 
tisan support. Putting national departments on an efficiency 
basis has been unqualifiedly favored by Democratic, Republican 
and independent papers. 

The only avowed reasons for opposing the measure are : 
(a) a $200,000 appropriation should be saved; (b) work 
should be done by congressional committees; (c) work should 
be done by departments. In answer to these reasons there is 
ample evidence to prove that : 

a. It will cost millions in 191 3, and each year thereafter, to 
save this $200,000; many times $200,000 were saved in 191 1 
and have already been saved in 191 2, through use made of 
information furnished to Congress by the commission — and not 
otherwise available. 

b. This is work that can be done only by one continuing, 
central, technical body, and cannot be done by numerous con- 
gressional committees. Such committees have been compara- 
tively futile because they have been unable to get enough facts 
and have never had the continuity needful for success. Follow- 
up work that rebuilds is quite as important as investigation that 
discloses the need for rebuilding. 

c. The departments are already doing much. They will do 
vastly more if stimulated and guided by a central body of ex- 
perts armed with authority to enforce uniform, appropriate, 
modern business methods. 

The fulfilment of platform and campaign pledges in 191 3 
will be practically impossible without such information as this 
work is accumulating. The continuance of the present effi- 
ciency work is an indispensable asset to Democrats and Repub- 
licans alike. 

The business man's patriotic interest in national business is 
reason enough for continuing this work for efficiency in national 

(563) 



90 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

departments. But in addition, the citizen knows that putting 
national departments on a modern efficiency basis must in in- 
numerable ways benefit private business and give tremendous 
impetus to efficiency in city, county and state business through- 
out the country. 

Fortunately New York city's citizens are not voiceless as to 
budgetary provisions for that city's social needs. But this year 
we must act earlier than usual. National and state campaigns 
will make it almost impossible to secure public audience for 
discussion of social needs and budgetary provisions after June. 
Prompt action between now and June will pay huge dividends. 
If we give the city government the benefit of definite knowledge 
possessed by us respecting social needs not yet met by different 
departments, the best results will come from pointing out gaps 
between what the public agree ought to be done through gov- 
ernment and what it is actually getting done through govern- 
ment. Here and there is a social need which no government 
department has yet undertaken to meet and which it is worth 
while trying to lodge upon the shoulders of taxpayers. Even 
here, however, success requires that the interest of the right 
department be enlisted before that department submits its bud- 
get estimates next July. 

It is most exceptional that discussions of budget estimates 
ever add to requests made by departments. They frequently 
subtract from such requests. If, therefore, we wish departments 
in 191 3 to do work never yet undertaken or to do more of cer- 
tain kinds of work already undertaken, the time for us to pre- 
sent our facts to departments and to the public is between now 
and June first. 

The greatest social worker in New York is the city govern- 
ment; the only picture we ever get of what the city government 
plans to do and is asked to do is the annual budget estimate ; the 
time to get needs into estimates is now; the time to explain 
needs is now ; although the budget is voted in October all the 
time between now and October is required to inform the public 
about budgetary provisions for social needs. 

Another set of facts needs emphasis : each agency's budget 
is all it has to spend plus what the city spends in all depart- 

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No. 4 ] BUDGETARY PROVISION FOR SOCIAL NEEDS 91 

ments ; every act of government relieves or aggravates a social 
need ; the most effective philanthropy is that which supple- 
ments and inspires government action; the least effective 
philanthropy is that which tries to take the place of work pro- 
vided for in the city's budget ; the monthly loss of life in New 
York city from preventable causes is greater than the Titanic's 
loss ; the worst diseases are in people's attitude toward govern- 
ment; the only agency able to do educational work on a large 
enough scale to change anti-social attitude toward government 
is government ; the only means is budgetary provision. 

To make our local city government discharge efficiently its 
duties as our social-worker-in-chief, we need the enactment of 
a charter for the Rockefeller Foundation; we need the ap- 
propriation by Congress of $200,000 for continuing the 
economy and efficiency work in national departments ; and we 
need the interest of the social-worker group, including philan- 
thropists who support social work, in the steps between now 
and June upon which will depend next year's budgetary pro- 
visions for social needs in Greater New York. 

(565) 



AN INTERPRETATION OF VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 

BY ALICE PRENTICE BARROWS 

The Vocational Guidance Survey 

NO one ever thinks until he has to, and he does not have 
to until things go wrong. Sometimes, however, he 
gets a warning that they are about to go wrong. 
Whether he acts upon the warning depends upon whether he 
has formed the habit of putting two and two together. The 
sudden cry for vocational guidance is a warning to take thought 
in a complex and disturbing situation. It announces the pre- 
liminary struggle between industry and the schools ; it is the 
cry, " They're at it!" We may rush panting to the rescue 
with all the paraphernalia of aids to the injured after one or the 
other combatant is down ; we may get control of the weapon of 
one of them; or we may call a halt and say, " What is all this 
about, anyway?" In other words, the plea for vocational 
guidance may herald a great democratic revolution in education, 
or it may sound its death-knell. 

Some years ago business descended upon the schools and 
captured commercial education. The reason for the assault is 
easily understood. The schools were said not to be " prac- 
tical." They did not prepare for life, which was spelled " busi- 
ness." But the attempt to graft a narrow commercial education 
onto a little-understood general curriculum was probably the 
most impractical thing ever started by " business." It resulted in 
compressing education into tabloid form for the consumption of 
employers. It turned out children who were too early and too 
superficially specialized to remain efficient when they got out 
into the struggle for life. If that experiment proved anything, 
it proved that education is an organic, not a mechanical thing, 
and that to try to train children by suddenly " tacking on " 
highly specialized courses to an unrelated general curriculum 
violates the processes of nature. A child simply does not grow 
that way. Now vocational guidance is the popular warning of 

(566) 



VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 93 

the same danger in regard to vocational training, particularly 
industrial vocational training. Vocational guidance is not yet a 
program. It is only an exclamation of dismay, perhaps of 
prophecy. What it may become remains to be seen. 

This is not the usual interpretation of vocational guidance, but 
the history of its rise and the causes of its appearance will per- 
haps show the reasons for its various interpretations and sug- 
gest which one is most fundamental and far-reaching in its 
possibilities. 

It is significant of the present uncrystallized state of this 
movement that the words vocational guidance and vocational 
training are often used interchangeably, and that the terms 
industrial education, decay of the apprenticeship system, blind- 
alley occupations, and need of a lifework are all tangled up 
with this ill-defined phrase vocational guidance. And they are 
all bandied about in conferences and discussions in a loose and 
solemn fashion, to the despair of those who want to know what 
it is all about. It were well if we could throw all these hack- 
neyed terms overboard, and start with a clean slate, go straight 
to the facts and draw our conclusions freshly from them. 

It should be remembered that the rise of vocational guidance 
in this country differs from its rise in Europe, and that if we 
are going to understand its development, we must study it with 
relation to American conditions, temperament, and institutions, 
rather than with respect to its evolution in an older country. 
I have in mind two stories which are true and which give vividly 
the history of the changing social conditions that made the cry 
of vocational guidance to be heard in the land. 

The first is the story of a man who probably represents the 
finest type that America has yet produced. He was brought 
up in the state of Maine, that land of pine-trees and granite 
rocks, wild roses and a restless sea. In its sun warmth and 
under its free skies he grew up without fear or favor, stalwart 
of figure, slow of speech, keen-eyed, with that humorous, 
shrewd appreciation of human foibles so characteristic of the 
sons of that democratic state. 

I left school to go to work when I was eleven years old, he said. I 

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94 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

got all my education in the little red schoolhouse and in the school of 
life — and a great school that was, too. We didn't have anything but 
reading, writing and arithmetic, and an occasional whipping in the little 
red schoolhouse, but outside we got hard knocks. I remember I began 
as a clerk in a country store. I had to do everything in that store. 
Pretty soon I knew everybody in the village. I had a whack at every- 
thing going — fooled around the carpenter shop (it kind of fascinated 
me), hung around the blacksmith shop after hours, and did a little 
farming for Farmer Higgins before the store opened. I'll never forget 
when I was doing odd jobs for the old man. The bull got acting up 
and I caught him by the tail. Whew ! Only thing I remember after 
that was old Higgins saying solemnly to me , * ' Remember , my son , al- 
ways to seize the horns of a difficulty — never the tail." Well, I could 
turn my hand to about anything in that village. We had good times, 
too. There was the baseball team, and there were the church sociables, 
the husking bees and the skating in winter. 

By seventeen I was running that store, and then another boy and I 
went into partnership and started one of our own. I'll never forget 
how proud I was when I saw my name on the sign-board. We moved 
to a small town, but we didn't lose our old customers, because I got a 
horse and buggy and took orders all over the countryside. Just before 
the Civil War we moved up to Boston. I gave up the store business 
and went into manufacturing. I had always been fond of machinery, 
used to tinker with tools around the farm, and pretty soon I worked 
out a machine that saved time in our business, and that landed me in 
New York. 

Yes, it was hard work, all of it, but somehow in those days we always 
had time for another side of life — for sitting on the village bridge in the 
moonlight spouting poetry, and for lying in the fields in summer swap- 
ping yarns, or for sitting hunched up over the open fire in winter telling 
each other how we were going to be Daniel Websters. It was good 
fun — life was, then. If you worked hard it was your own fault, but 
somehow you wanted to work because you kept discovering things faster 
than you could say " Jack Robinson." But boys aren't like what they 
used to be. They don't seem to have any ambition. 

The second boy lived about fifty years after the first boy was 
born. His home was on the lower west side of New York city, 
the great manufacturing center of the city. It is the region of 
giant factories with hundreds of workers, and of huge tenements 
with a bewildering multitude of families. Most of the things 

(568) 



No. 4] VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 95 

that the boy eats or wears or plays with are made here, and 
these things are also made for hundreds of thousands of other 
boys and girls and men and women all over the country. It is, 
at the same time, more like a village than any other part of the 
city. It is a place of winding, irregular streets, quiet, sunny 
side-streets of playing boys and girls, and unexpected horse- 
cars ; streets of roaring " elevateds" and congested truck traffic. 
And on these streets you come suddenly upon beautiful old col- 
onial mansions whose exquisitely simple carved doorways give 
dignified, noncommittal entrance to bare, chill, dirty halls and 
filthy rooms of human-hair factories, or to the alien rooms of 
an Italian family of eight. It is the district of contrasts. It is 
the region of small neighborhood stores — the cosy, ground- 
floor corner shoe-shops crowded by paper-box factories, one of 
whose wagon-loads carries boxes for more shoes than the old 
spectacled shoemaker makes in a year; of picturesque Italian 
restaurants, and of huge food factories; of push-cart "under- 
wear at twenty cents," and shirtwaist factories with nine hundred 
workers; of small printing shops standing in the shadow of 
towering publishing houses. 

Did the boy in this village, living only fifty years later than 
the first boy, "get a whack at everything?" Did he know 
everybody, get a friendly initiation into all the activities of the 
neighborhood, and have time for reading and " spouting poetry " 
and sitting in the moonlight talking, bright-eyed, of how he was 
going to be a great man? Here apparently were simple village 
activities side by side with the great modern machinery of in- 
dustry. Could he not start in the small shop and "work up" 
to the big factories? Had he not even a better opportunity 
than the first boy to pick and choose different lines of work 
among the small employers, and then advance, a self-respecting, 
well-equipped workman, to the larger establishments? 

The walk down Sullivan street to West Third, along West 
Broadway, Prince, and Macdougal to the boy's home is sufficient 
to answer those questions. It is true that the factory and the 
small shop exist together, but they exist side by side with no 
gradation from one to the other. The small shop is there, but 
it is merely a picturesque bit of local color fast fading in the 

(569) 



96 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

shadow of towering factories which crowd it for room. The 
factory is the dominant reality. The vibration of its whirring 
machinery is felt throughout the village. You get a sudden 
gust of it as a door is unexpectedly opened. You feel the 
reverberation of it as you ascend the stairs of an old dwelling 
turned into a sweatshop. The dust from it blinds and chokes 
you. It has entered into the spirit of the small shop so that 
although to all appearances it is the oldtime village shop, it has 
been fundamentally changed and no longer has time to offer 
anything to the boy in the way of education. The machine 
has entered into the nerves of the people. It pervades every- 
thing. The whole place is speeded up. A friend of the boy 
tried working in a small neighborhood shop, but he had " to 
stay all hours," as the employer tried desperately to make profit 
out of his customers, who had only the evening for shopping 
because their hours in the factory were so long. The taint of 
the factory and the drive of the factory is in the home-work 
and changes the home into a place where father and mother and 
small children speed up far into the night on the making of 
flower after flower — at three cents a gross ! 

What happens to a boy in this village when he leaves school 
to go to work? What kind of work does he take up? When 
I first saw the boy whose story I am relating here, he was in 
his home, a " new-law " tenement, with stone floors and iron 
stairs, " like a prison." It was a well-to-do place, for it had 
push buttons and speaking-tubes. You passed six families on 
every floor, as you climbed to the boy's apartment — a place of 
much furniture and sprawling children, a mother bending over 
artificial flowers, and a father sitting reading the newspaper with 
his hat on. The boy is an American, although one parent was 
born in Europe. He is fourteen years old, and he left the 
great gray school building down the street because he " didn't 
like to study." The family were both able and willing to keep 
him in school, but ''It's like this," said the mother; "if he 
doesn't want to go to school and doesn't want to study, we 
thought he might play truant, and it would be better for him to 
work, and besides, it's time he learned something." The boy 
said he didn't like school, but he didn't dislike it. When 

(57o) 



No. 4] VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE gy 

asked what studies he had taken, he said, " the regular ones." 
He had lost interest at about the fourth grade. He liked shop- 
work but didn't have it until the seventh grade, and by that 
time he had already made his plans for leaving school. 

During the six months after he left he worked in six different 
places, staying from one day to six weeks in each. He cer- 
tainly did " have a whack " at many things, but in a different 
way from our first boy. The latter worked on the farm before 
breakfast. The former " helped on the wagon of a milk 
delivery concern," starting at one a. m. and helping to lift off 
cans at the ferry until ten a. m. It was out-of-door work, but 
on pavements in the midst of city sounds and smells. He was 
paid $4.50 a week, but left because he didn't like the night 
work. 

He wandered around for a week and a half, and then found 
work in a printing house because he " knew a feller there," and 
thought it a good chance. Here was a real trade, something to 
study, with definite steps of advancement. What did this boy, 
who had no influence or training, learn there? He " pulled 
out" and " slip-sheeted." " You see," he said, " each press has 
its own feeder. But as the sheets come out they must be piled 
just so, with a sheet in between each one — something like blot- 
ting paper. This is ' slipsheeting.' Then when they are dry, 
another boy piles them again, taking out the slip sheets. That 
is ' pulling out.' " In spite of the monotony, he liked the work 
and was trying to pick it up when the blight of the slack 
season, that terror of modern industry, descended upon the 
trade, and he was laid off. 

For a month, he did not try for work at all because he knew 
that everything was slack, but finally got a position in an arti- 
ficial flower house, coloring flowers. " I stuck them in the 
dyes, and then held them up and squeezed out the dye, but I 
left because I didn't like the place. The dye gets on your 
hands and you can hardly get it off. It smells awful." 

For three weeks he " walked around " and looked in the 
paper for jobs. He tried five or six places, " but they didn't 
need a boy, and there were always twenty ahead of me." At 
last he " got into a human-hair place," but left at the end of 

(57i) 



98 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

fifteen days because he didn't like the trade. " I didn't have 
no patience with it. I'd rather be something like a plumber's 
helper or a carpenter's helper, something where you could use 
your arms, and not just your fingers." He worked there nine 
hours a day and got the same wages as in the first position. 
When last heard from he was in a "novelty place." He had 
told an employment bureau that he wanted something where 
he could learn a trade. He works on a copper buckle or 
badge. He cuts out the sheet copper in a proper pattern with 
heavy scissors. Then he pounds the metal upon a mold 
made of " like it was heavy lead." He stands all day for nine 
hours doing this. When asked if he liked it, he said hesitat- 
ingly, " Yes, I like it, but the work is too heavy. I got five 
blisters the first day from using the scissors to cut some brass. 
And you stand up from morning till night. You never get a 
rest. It's a man's work. I think he ought to pay me more." 
He was receiving $5. 

And what are his good times? Well, he, too belongs to a 
baseball team, which plays at Dyckman street in the sum- 
mer — ten miles away from where he lives. Instead of soci- 
ables and husking bees, he goes to moving pictures, but he 
" likes to stay home pretty well," where the family of seven 
lives in four rooms. He wanted to know " how you can learn 
a trade." 

What do these two stories mean? I should say that they 
mean two things : first, that in this country we have telescoped 
centuries in a night with the result that one day we were living 
in the village of the first boy, and the next were being whirled 
through the city of the second ; second, that in the midst of 
these lightning-like changes, one thing has been consistently 
and constantly overlooked, aud that is education. The causes 
of both these facts can be traced to American conditions and 
the American temperament. 

It is a curious fact that it is taken for granted that Americans 
have always been devoted to education. They have not been. 
They have been devoted to school systems. These school sys- 
tems have been started in accordance with a theory of educa- 
tion whose postulates Americans have never examined until 

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No. 4] VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 99 

recently. It was as though the early Pilgrim Fathers, standing 
on Plymouth Rock and observing the wilderness to be con- 
quered, had said : " Here is a great practical task to be ac- 
complished, but before embarking on it we must remember 
that, for a democracy, education of all the people is necessary. 
Schools must be erected." Whereupon, schools were erected 
as they have been since the middle ages. Teachers and pupils 
were put into them and then the early fathers, taking a long 
breath at having that out of the way, went about the real busi- 
ness of making a success of the country, trusting that the schools 
would turn out citizens for the new republic. It is interesting 
to observe the results. 

It makes very little difference how a child gets his education, 
provided it is a real one, one that cultivates in one the habit 
of thinking for himself. The early Greek initiation into the 
duties of citizenship was probably the best system of education 
that ever existed. And in some ways the conditions of life in 
New England in the early days resembled it a good deal. The 
boy in the first story got a real education. He took part in all 
the community activities. He could run the village and the 
store because he had shared all its duties. He knew its history. 
His father and his father's father had helped to make the state 
where he lived. In his work on the farm, in the blacksmith 
shop, in the carpenter shop, he came to know by doing the fun- 
damental work by which every community is built up. And in 
this way he found his own bent by trying himself out at various 
things. He received an education not because of, but in spite 
of the little red schoolhouse. That had as little connection with 
his real life as it did with the real life of the second boy. Any- 
one who comes of a line of New Englanders knows that school 
meant to his fathers a small square room with the beckoning 
fields outside, inexplicable tasks, much-whittled desks and a 
dash for recess and freedom. But out of the real school, the 
village life, came a race of shrewd Yankees, young with the 
energy and optimism of youth in a new country. Conquering 
the country was to them a high adventure, good sport. With 
native smartness and inventiveness, the generation that had 
been trained on the farm turned to creating cities. They 

(573) 



IOO ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

passed industrial epochs at a bound, and had the youthful 
strength to stand the strain. They covered centuries in a de- 
cade, and had breath left to shout. They had the vigor that 
comes from having lived close to the soil. But the multitudes 
flowed into these cities that had been built for them ; and, be- 
hold, New York city is a towering, menacing fact. Within this 
city there has grown up a generation that lives on what has 
been made for it. Here is the great inexplicable city where 
they are whirled, jerked, rushed through existence, where they 
are shot down into subways and up in elevators, where they find 
themselves climbing stairs by machinery, and whisking lunch 
off moving tables. 

In this maelstrom the children are tossed about like chips. 
They have been forgotten in the rush for " making good." 
The perplexing thing to them is that all about them they are 
told that they are not " what boys used to be." Here, they 
learn, is one great man that " began at eleven and worked up 
by his own efforts." Or, " In my day a boy was always finding 
a better and quicker way of doing his job. He took an interest 
in it. There was my brother. He was in the shoe business. 
He had to work a machine using both hands. Well, one day 
the head of the firm came along and found him sitting there 
with his machine going by itself. But boys aren't like that 
nowadays." Or, they are told that " what you want to do is to 
learn the business from start to finish. That is what my father 
did, and now he is the richest man in the city." Well, that is 
what they want to do. But they do not find it possible. The 
modern boy of our story was not lazy — any more than most of 
us. He was ambitious to learn a trade. He wanted " some- 
thing where you can use your arms; " he "would like to be a 
carpenter's helper." But when he did get into a trade, in the 
first place he not only had a very small unrelated task to do, 
but the rush was so great that he could have no eyes for any- 
thing but the pulling-out and slip-sheeting ; and because of this 
same rush, the slack season cut short his chances of learning 
the trade. In the other place, the value of any training that he 
might get was rendered questionable by the fact that he had to 
stand all day for nine hours doing a man's work, after which he 

(574) 



No. 4] VOCATIOXAL GUIDANCE 10 1 

went home along the noisy, clanging streets to a noisy, crowded 
home. He simply did not have the chance of the first boy. 

Instead of entering the village store the New York boy may 
go into a department store and sit in the basement watching 
check slips shot down through a tube and shot up again. On 
the floors above, among the tramping feet, the department store 
lavishes its wares in subdivision after subdivision of luxury. 
" Work up," " learn the business," in that maze which he never 
touches except at the end of a tube ? If such a boy is ah Ameri- 
can with some lack of respect for established order, he leaves 
in contempt and " walks around " until he finds another job, and 
continues until he succumbs or is thrown aside. If he is of the 
great army of immigrants who are even more persuaded than our 
own people that this is a land of opportunity and education, he 
stays, believing that in this land of promise this job must lead 
somewhere. Industry is a tube, a needle, a foot-press, to the 
average worker. He does not know what there is, or how to 
get it. His work, to such a boy, is represented by a sidedoor 
elevator in which he rides at his own risk, a military row of 
heads bowed over machines or desks, a flash, a whirr, a tired 
back and a desire to leave. 

As long as the community life gave real education, the state 
could without danger let the school remain the repository of 
inexplicable truth, but to the extent to which the state fails to 
order its social and industrial life so that the children may par- 
ticipate in the fundamental community activities, to that extent 
we must see to it that special institutions are set apart for the 
special purpose of giving these children some understanding of 
the life in which they find themselves. The more complex 
conditions become, the more imperative this need is, and it is a 
need that will be increasingly felt in this country, for it is use- 
less to expect that conditions will become less complex. The 
history of America, and of civilization in general, does not war- 
rant such an expectation. But it is consistent with the history 
of human achievement to expect that we may develop, along 
with this increasing complexity, the power to control it by 
analyzing and understanding it. This is the function of educa- 
tion in a highly developed civilization. 

(575) 



102 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

But the state in our country has, so far, failed to recognize 
that fact. It fails to supply schools for training in good citi- 
zenship and good workmanship ; and it fails because its people 
have always neglected to articulate their mental life and their 
" practical " life. The division between the school and life is 
important, but even more important is the fact that the division 
is due to the fundamental separation that there has always been 
in America between " practical " life and the life of speculative 
thought. The following words of Santayana in regard to our 
philosophic system will express my point better than any words 
of mine, for education is, of course, only the expression of a 
nation's philosophy: 

America is a country with two mentalities, one a survival of the beliefs 
and standards of the fathers, the other an expression of the instincts, 
practise and discoveries of the younger generation. In all the higher 
things of the mind — in religion, in literature, in the moral emotions — 
it is the hereditary spirit that still prevails, so much so that Bernard 
Shaw finds that America is a hundred years behind the times. The 
truth is that one-half of the American mind, that not occupied intensely 
in practical affairs, has remained, I will not say high-and-dry , but 
slightly becalmed ; it has floated gently in the backwater, while, along- 
side, in invention and industry and social organization, the other half 
of the mind was leaping down a sort of Niagara Rapids. . . . The one 
is all aggressive enterprise ; the other is all genteel tradition. 1 

If this hypothesis is true, and I believe it is, and if the fore- 
going stories are typical of conditions, and I believe they are, 
one or two things become clear in regard to the movement for 
vocational guidance. It is evident that it has its roots in a 
maladjustment deeper and more fundamental than is at first 
apparent. If the lives of these two boys and the analysis 
prove anything, they prove that the present clash exists be- 
cause since the beginning of our history we have kept our 
educational life and our practical life in separate compartments, 
so that now when they need one another they do not know 
how to talk to each other. It is not the fault of the schools. 

1 The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy, p. 4. 
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No. 4] VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 103 

It is the fault of the American temperament, which has al- 
ways been content with the " genteel tradition " in its thinking 
life. 

The foregoing is not meant to be a mere psychological 
analysis. It has a direct, practical bearing upon the question 
of vocational guidance. Americans are never going to be 
content with the " genteel tradition " when it really gets in 
their way. As long as it is on the shelf and is only taken 
down on Sundays and holidays, it can be sentimentalized over 
with safety, but when it begins to interfere with Monday morn- 
ing's work in the office, it has to go. It is beginning to do 
just that. What is going to be put in its place? What is go- 
ing to take the place of the school of our fathers? 

One of three things may happen. In the first place, we 
may carry our real, every-day philosophy to its logical, 
practical conclusion. The business man, who is America, may 
say: 

Yes, the schools are not related to life. This will never do. We 
must relate them to life. Trade in New York city in the year 191 2 is 
life. Therefore, train children for earning their living in trade in 
New York city in 191 2. Never mind about what went before or what 
is coming after. Guide them into vocations now. I want twenty 
boys for my machine shops. 

If that point of view prevails, we shall have short-course trade 
schools, and vocational guidance will be a bureau for giving 
advice about vocations. 

Or we may fall back upon the omnipresent sentimentality of 
the practical man — another fungus of the " genteel tradition '' 
— and say : 

This state of affairs is pathetic. What are we going to do with these 
children that school cannot hold ? It's no use talking about keeping 
them in school. They will not stay. You cannot make the schools 
attractive. The boys and girls want to help their parents. Their 
unselfishness should not be discouraged. Let us find work for them. 
T need twenty boys in my machine shops. 

(577) 



104 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

In that case vocational guidance becomes a regular employment 
bureau for placing children in positions. 

Either answer to the problem is dangerous because both, 
continuing the American tradition, slight the problem of edu- 
cation. The first would provide a " practical " school adapted 
to the needs of to-day ; but with trade conditions changing so 
rapidly, such a school would fail to meet even the demands of 
its own time. The second would simply swell the ranks of that 
army of workers which, caught in the pressure of city life, is 
not educated either by the normal community activities or by 
the school. 

Vocational guidance must face the fact that it must be, in 
justice to the child, a problem in education. Since the school 
does not really educate, and since the community no longer 
educates, one or the other must be made to educate. It is 
impossible to simplify the complexity or stay the heedless rush 
of New York industrial life. It is the school which we must 
grapple with. It must be given an opportunity to take the 
place of that simple village life which, in its variety and in its 
demand for personal service, instructed a generation for whom 
there was no need of vocational guidance. This is the third 
answer to the problem, and might be stated concretely as follows : 

It is true that the schools are not related to life , and that consequently 
the children are leaving them in alarming numbers. It is difficult to 
hold them there, but it is not impossible. To do that, however, we 
must recognize that our schools have never really educated , and conse- 
quently that they must be reorganized from the beginning. Tacking 
on six-months trade courses will not help matters. 

There is reason to hope that such an answer may prevail, 
because if America has been medieval in its school systems, it 
has also produced one of the greatest educators of the century, 
one who analyzed American tendencies and the flaws in Ameri- 
can education long before the present agitation for reform. 
He has, in fact, made it possible for the call for such recon- 
struction to come from the schoolmen themselves, as it is com- 
ing. If his school of thought prevails, we shall have the solution 
of the problem in his definition of the training of a child. Says 

John Dewey : 

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No. 4] VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 105 

The child is to be not only a voter and a subject of law ; he is also 
to be a member of a family. He is to be a worker, engaged in some 
occupation which will be of use to society and which will maintain his 
own independence and self-respect. He is to be a member of some 
particular neighborhood and community , and must contribute to the 

decencies and graces of civilization wherever he is To 

suppose that a good citizen is anything more than a thoroughly efficient 

and serviceable member of society is a cramped superstition 

which it is hoped may soon disappear from educational discussion. 

If this third answer, involving the socializing rather than the 
mechanizing of the school, carries the day, what will be the 
school of the future, and what place in its development is there 
for vocational guidance? Can vocational guidance be more 
than a warning cry that such a newer type of school is needed? 
Can it be of practical assistance in making this school a 
reality ? 

Before considering that point, I should like to draw attention 
again to the fact that the lack of educational advance is due 
not to the school but to the blind optimism of the American 
taxpayer in regard to the established order of education. 
Convinced as he is that he only has to give money for schools 
as they always have been, he opposes a polite but solid front 
of uncomprehending disapproval to innovation or what he calls 
" fads." There is an interesting illustration of this fact in the 
history of the New York public schools. In the beginning of 
the manual training movement, as soon as the practicability of 
manual training had been proved to the satisfaction of the ablest 
educators, the superintendent of schools advocated the starting 
of such classes in the public schools. He has only gradually 
secured them from a grudging public, and even now has not so 
many as he wants and he has none for grades lower than the 
seventh. In the year 191 1 , the budget for the board of 
education was cut, thereby crippling the work so laboriously 
built up. Again, the public has been slowly worked up to an 
appreciation of the need of classes for defectives. Excellent 
and beneficial as that is to the children as a whole, perhaps even 
more important from a constructive point of view is the campaign 
that the city superintendent has now started for the more ade- 

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106 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

quate education of the normal children. In his report this year, 
he advocated the establishment of more vocational schools, and 
the inauguration of continuation schools — a recommendation in 
line with the most progressive thought of the times. It will be 
interesting to see how long he will have to make this demand 
before the city will permit such schools in New York. It is a 
curious fact that, in spite of such widespread progressive move- 
ments upon the part of educators, the school systems are still at- 
tacked as behind the times, while appropriations for courses 
consistent with development along progressive lines are only 
reluctantly and protestingly granted. Criticism is much easier 
than going down into one's pocket for the large expenditure 
necessary for such changes. If the American is to give up the 
" genteel tradition," he must see the value of spending ten 
times as much on education as he now spends. 

In spite of the indifference of the average citizen, however, 
there are two clearly defined progressive movements in the 
school in connection with which vocational guidance can render 
real service. They are the movement for the establishment of 
vocational and continuation schools, and that for the " six and 
six plan." Both movements involve a real upheaval of present 
arrangements. To be effective, they must be founded upon 
accurate, concrete knowledge of present conditions and tend- 
encies, and such knowledge cannot be secured in a short time. 
And the schools have a very limited amount of time to give to 
such work, as they are already overburdened with the task of 
carrying on the machinery of the present educational system. 
The tendency under these conditions would be, therefore, to 
secure information from those to whom trade training and 
the supply of workers is of practical importance, i. e., the em- 
ployers. But it would not be wise to take the word merely of 
those who have private interests at stake. The information 
should be secured by someone who can go into the matter 
thoroughly enough to get the suggestions of both employers and 
working men, and reduce them to an impartial statement of 
facts on which to base action. Therefore, the school authorities 
have the right to demand of the state the services of a bureau 
not outside but within the school system, whose business it 

(580) 



No. 4] VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 107 

shall be to collect information which will enable them to carry 
on these two reconstructive movements in accordance with the 
facts of present conditions and sound educational theory. 
Such, in my opinion, is at present the function of a vocational 
guidance bureau. It would really be a School Bureau of Voca- 
tional Information and would give guidance of the most funda- 
mental kind, that is, guidance in this readjustment between 
education and industry, by getting information about vocations 
interpreted in their most social sense. 

And what shall its practical work be? To explain that, I 
must go back a moment to a description of the two lines of 
progressive reconstruction mentioned above — the movement for 
vocational schools and the suggested revision of the curriculum 
in accordance with the " six and six " plan. Because the 
American people are likely to ignore the educational oppor- 
tunities in the industrial demand, there is the gravest possible 
danger that plans for changes in the curriculum advocated in 
the "six and six" plan and in the vocational schools may be 
too narrow in scope. A School Bureau of Vocational Informa- 
tion may forestall that danger. To illustrate, the "six and six" 
plan will probably develop in one of three principal ways. The 
proposition is, as I understand it, to cover the ground that is 
now covered in eight years of elementary schooling, in six 
years, so that the children will finish the general course in what 
is now the sixth grade. That means that normally they would 
finish that grade at twelve years of age. Actually, of course, 
many children in the sixth grade are fourteen years old. How- 
ever, assuming that under this new plan there would be less 
retardation, let us divide the next six years into two-year groups. 
The course for the children from twelve to fourteen years of 
age might then be divided into industrial and commercial de- 
partments, which would have a common denominator of general 
studies with perhaps one third of the time in each department de- 
voted to special trade or commercial work. In this arrangement, 
boys and girls would probably be segregated, the boys taking 
trade or commercial courses particularly fitted to them, and the 
girls those for which it is considered that their capabilities make 
them fit. According to this plan, the children during the next 

(581) 



108 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

two years, from fourteen to sixteen, might devote their whole 
time to a study of the special trade or course which the previous 
two years had convinced them they preferred. They could 
spend two or four years on such a course, depending upon the 
time at their disposal and the degree of training necessary. 

On the other hand, the " six and six" plan might result in a gen- 
eral course up to the sixth grade, with a general vocational course 
from twelve years to fourteen years of age, with no division of 
the work into industrial and commercial, or into that for boys 
and that for girls, with special vocational work from fourteen to 
sixteen, or fourteen to eighteen. Such a plan would be based 
on the assumption that it is untrue to the facts of present-day 
life to divide courses into industrial and commercial, as well as 
educationally unsound to predetermine a child's bent at twelve 
years of age. It would also assume that to divide courses into 
boys' work and girls' work is to cling to an outworn prejudice 
rather than to recognize the facts of actual life which record 
that women are at work in all but three of the occupations recog- 
nized by the census in which men are engaged, and therefore 
need training for all of them just as boys do. As Mr. Arthur 
D. Dean has said : " We must definitely fit her for the work 
which she has chosen in the productive and distributive fields 
of labor. Work here she will, and all the brooms of good 
people will not sweep back the tide." The special vocational 
courses under this plan could be carried on in one of two ways : 
(i) By full-day vocational courses in the schools from fourteen 
to sixteen, or fourteen to eighteen, according to the training 
necessary, or (2) By half-time work in the schools and half- 
time in the shops, from fourteen to sixteen, or fourteen to 
eighteen. 

There is a third possibility in this " six and six " plan. Experi- 
ment may show that the kind of school outlined by Professor 
John Dewey in The School and Society offers the most practical 
method of correcting the maladjustment at present existing be- 
tween the school and society. The more one reads that small 
and unostentatious-looking book, and the more one goes out 
into the streets and tenements and factories and playgrounds, 
where the great mass of children in a city like New York live 

(582) 



No. 4] VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 109 

and work and play, the more one is convinced that in that little 
volume is outlined the most practical and economic method of 
meeting the maladjustment that makes the cry for vocational 
guidance possible, because the author provides for the teaching 
of those community activities the lack of which in the child's 
life we have discovered to be the cause of the maladjustment. 

Whichever way the " six and six " plan is interpreted, there is 
one other point of primary importance to be determined. If one 
of the first two plans goes through, and children finish their gen- 
eral course at twelve years of age, or in the sixth grade, is there 
any danger of the law being changed to permit them to leave 
school for work at twelve years, or will there be a law compel- 
ling all children to attend school either half-time or full-time up 
to sixteen years of age — in the first case receiving training in a 
trade, part of the time in the shop and part in the school ; in 
the second case spending all the time in the school? This of 
course brings us into connection with the second movement for 
reconstruction, that is, the vocational and continuation-school 
plans. It is evident that this general and special school revision 
cannot be divorced. The children who go into vocational and 
continuation schools are coming out of the general elementary 
schools. How is the vocational to supplement the general 
school? That depends upon how we interpret education and 
industry. A School Bureau of Vocational Information could 
do much to make that interpretation sound by supplying data 
for it. 

In connection with what group of young workers shall we get 
these data? There are three groups of children, and three 
types of school, for which such a bureau might work: (1) Ele- 
mentary schools and children, including the fourteen to sixteen- 
year-old children who first leave school to go to work; (2) 
Secondary, or high schools, and the group of children from 
fourteen to eighteen; (3) The eighteen to twenty-one year old 
group of children in technical or trade courses. It would be 
difficult to say which is the most important. The first group 
appeals to me as the most important, because ultimately, to 
help the last two, we shall have to change conditions for the 
first, and also because the reconstruction mentioned above 

(583) 



HO ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

centers about this group. There is one piece of work in this 
group which it is of immediate importance for a bureau to 
carry on, and that is an investigation of trades. There are 
certain points upon which we already know that we need in- 
formation before we can be sure that we are constructing trade 
schools on the right lines. For example, there is at present a 
discussion of the relative value of trade training given in all-day 
vocational schools, and that given in half-time schools, i. e., 
half time in the school and half time in the shop. 

There are a number of facts that must be ascertained before 
we can decide that point. Such facts can be divided roughly 
into three groups : ( I ) The kind of trades to be taught in 
either all-day or half-day vocational schools. (2) The kind 
of pre-vocational schooling that will be necessary if the pupils 
are to master the vocational work in the allotted time. (3) The 
state supervision of the conditions under which the work is 
done. The following are a few of the questions that might be 
considered under each head : 

I. The Kind of Trades to be Taught. 

a. What trades is the state justified in spending the money 
and the time to teach in either type of school? 

b. What is a "blind-alley" occupation? What is a skilled 
trade? Is the state justified in training children for paper-box- 
making, for example? Or is it justified in training them for 
industries that demand only specialized workers on subdivided 
processes of subdivisions of trades? Would there be any 
danger of systematically preparing workers for pieces of work 
which, in the rapid changes in industry, might be obsolete in 
five or ten years? Would the state, in that case, recruit the 
army of unemployables which it has to take care of in other 
state departments? But if such narrowly specialized workers 
represent the majority demanded by industry, what are the 
schools — which necessarily plan for the majority — going to do 
about it? Give up the fight for training citizens, and train 
" hands? " Or shall we say that if that is the kind of worker 
that industry wants, it is not the kind of man that the state 
wants, and that, even if he has to go into such work, he shall at 

(584) 



No. 4 ] VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE III 

least know why ; shall know the industrial development that led 
up to the present conditions, whether they are likely to last, and 
in what direction they are tending so that he shall not have the 
feeling of blind bewilderment of the second boy of our story? 
In that case, what is industry going to say? 

c. Is it true, on the contrary, that the tendency in certain in- 
dustries is toward the invention of machines so complicated that 
instead of the mechanical machine tender they demand the ser- 
vices of a highly skilled man with all-round knowledge? If so, 
what effect will this have upon the development of general and 
vocational schools ? Could preparation for such trades be better 
taught by half-time work in the shops? 

d. Again, does the increasing complexity and unity in variety 
of actual trade conditions point to the fact that our present 
classification of trades is antiquated? Would it be possible to 
construct curricula on the basis of the social need to be satisfied 
rather than on the basis of individual crafts? In that case, of 
course, the newer callings which take the place of an older trade 
in the construction of something always in demand, such as 
houses, for example, would be a part of the trade taught. 
What effect would this have not only upon the school curricula, 
but upon irregularity of employment, slack seasons, rules of 
apprenticeship and similar matters? 

II. The Kind of Pre-Vocational Schooling Necessary. 

If this careful, thorough training in trade is to be given, what 
kind of pre-vocational work must there be? Would the oppor- 
tunity to handle tools generally in studying the different com- 
munity activities — development of industry, for example, of 
weaving, carpentry, mechanics — give a boy a general familiarity 
with tools without which he would not be able to master a trade 
so rapidly? 

III. State Supervision of Conditions under which Children 
Work. 

Even if we get all these facts about the trade, how is the state 
to make sure that the children will work under conditions not 
inimical to health? 

Such might be the general outline of one task of such a 

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112 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

bureau. This conception of vocational guidance as a kind of 
School Bureau of Vocational Information will probably not ap- 
peal to the majority so much as the idea of an advice bureau 
or of an employment bureau. Its task is not so definite as that 
of an employment bureau nor has it the popular emotional ap- 
peal of an advice bureau. Such an interpretation of the cry 
for vocational guidance is to me, however, more consistent with 
the history of its rise, and is likely to yield results of more last- 
ing benefit. I believe that, if we hold to this idea, we shall 
" seize the horns rather than the tail of the difficulty." Of 
course, the chief obstacle to putting such an interpretation into 
effect is that the analysis of the situation and of the American 
character, upon which the interpretation is based, is addressed 
to an American audience, and for the very reason given in the 
analysis, the average American business man who gives the first 
answer to the problem is likely to brush aside this interpretation 
as theoretical, thus of course proving my point and condemning 
us to the inevitable fruition of the " genteel tradition." 

If, however, this interpretation is accepted, we may per- 
haps have a third type of boy in the future — one who had all 
the varied training of the village boy, but who received it in a 
school where he, too, began to use his hands and eyes and ears 
as early as five years of age ; in which he learned by taking 
part in all the fundamental activities of human life, studying 
geography as the science of man's relation to the earth, not as a 
complex chart of capitals and rivers, countries with exports and 
imports in a paragraph on the right-hand side of the one hun- 
dred and twentieth page ; studying history as the interpretation 
of the present life on the island of Manhattan, for example, not 
as an unending succession of battles and maneuvers, dates and 
great men ; and English as the art of communication of ideas 
and thoughts upon which our very existence is dependent, not 
as a perplexing text-book of adverbs and adjectives, or as the 
works of great men which we are told we ought to admire — and 
do not. In such a school he would work in wood and metal, at 
the forge and in the printing shop, neither in order to become 
" all-round" nor to learn a trade, but in order to get a prelim- 
inary knowledge of the fundamental facts of the industrial and 

(586) 



No. 4] VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 1 1 3 

social activities whose later, more complex expressions lie all 
about him, and from which, when he leaves school, he has to 
pick and choose his own work. In other words, such a boy 
would receive real education because he would learn to think, 
learn to put two and two together. Perhaps in that case he and 
the generation that follows will not get into such a tangle as the 
one we are in; will, in truth, have learned so that it is second 
nature to them, that no one thinks until he has to, but that a 
nation advances as its imagination becomes sufficiently sensitive, 
its powers of intellectual analysis sufficiently keen and its capacity 
for reaction sufficiently vital to foretell when things are about to 
go wrong, and act upon that foresight. 

(587) 



LABOR OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN TENEMENTS 



T 



MRS. FLORENCE KELLEY 
General Secretary National Consumers' League 

WO tasks of great difficulty confront those who are trying 
to prevent the labor of women and children in tenement 
houses. They are difficult because they are fundamental. 

The first is to induce the court of appeals of the state of New 
York to reverse itself, to reverse the opinion which has fast- 
ened the curse and blight of tenement-house work upon this 
city since the year 1888. In that year the court decided that 
the attempt to prohibit tenement-house work in the interest of 
the health of the people who do the work cannot be sustained 
as a legitimate use of the police power. 

When that decision was handed down people did not under- 
stand, as they do now, the communicability of disease, the 
relation of excessive fatigue of the workers to disease, or the 
relation of home work to excessive fatigue of women and chil- 
dren. We have now a body of new knowledge available for 
the use of the court of appeals. Our first task is to give wide 
publicity to the disease-breeding conditions of manufacture in 
the tenements, thus leading the legislature to make a fresh 
attempt at outright prohibition, at the same time making it 
possible for the court of appeals gracefully to reverse itself. 
Until that is done, all attempts at regulation of manufacture in 
tenements are illusory ; they simply lull the public conscience 
vainly and cruelly, when it ought to be alert and militant. 

The second task is to imitate Massachusetts in creating a state 
commission to examine into the wages paid women and children 
who work in the tenements, with a view to securing minimum 
wage boards in all those industries that overflow into tenement 
houses. 

We have at present forty industries for which licenses are 
required before work can be done in a tenement house ; but we 

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 1912. 

(588) 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN TENEMENTS 



US 



know of sixty-two additional industries carried on in the tene- 
ments for which no license is required. There are over thirteen 
thousand houses licensed as work shops, and in order really to 
control them we ought to have twenty-six thousand inspectors, 
an inspector in each house all day and all night. Without 
this, all inspection of tenement-house work is illusory. 

The Massachusetts method is to make it so expensive as to 
be unprofitable to employ workers in the tenements. The 
commission has made its report, the bill has been favorably re- 
ported out of committee and is now before the legislature. The 
members of the commission are hopeful that it may pass. 
When our legislature meets next year we shall have an object 
lesson, here at home, such as has existed in England for two 
years, and for seventeen years in Australia, of this method of 
dealing with home work by requiring that home workers shall 
receive compensation not only for the work they do, but for the 
relief they afford the manufacturer in the rent, heat, light, 
cleaning, supervision and transportation of materials and finished 
products. Where that has been done the joy of the manu- 
facturer in the overflow work has been dampened, and he has 
been encouraged to supply sufficient room for carrying on the 
work under his own responsible supervision, without the inter- 
vention of the great mass of sweaters who batten upon our 
tenement industry. 

In the opinion of the organization which I represent, these 
are the two difficult and essential next steps to be taken — the 
reversal of the decision of the court of appeals, and the estab- 
lishment of a Minimum Wage Boards Commission in this state. 

(589) 



TWO NATIONAL SOCIAL NEEDS » 

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 

Columbus, Ohio 

AMONG our national social needs is the need of a better 
understanding among the sections of the nation. Our 
land has grown so wide and sections are so far apart 
that they are likely to develop separate interests and jealousies 
and conflicts. Some of us are old enough to remember the 
growth of sectional feeling between North and South, and 
what came of it. There are those who say that that conflict 
was necessary and inevitable. I do not believe it. It might 
have been averted by a moderate degree of reasonableness and 
goodwill on both sides. The nation could have paid for the 
slaves at a tithe of the cost of the Civil War in money, to say 
nothing of the waste of the best manhood of the land and the 
engendering of race antagonisms which still threaten our peace. 
If we had only been willing to reason together, and to bear one 
another's burdens, we could have saved ourselves mountains of 
misery. 

Between East and West there are now possibilities of 
similar sectional conflicts. The East is the lender, and the 
West is the borrower. "The borrower is the servant of the 
lender," as the wise man says, and that servitude is sometimes 
unwelcome. Yet it ought to be a relation of friendship and co- 
operation. So it may be if we will take thought for the things 
that make for friendship and peace. Yet one who lives midway 
between the East and the West is sometimes pained to see how 
each misinterprets the other, and is often constrained to wish 
for a better understanding between them. I cannot help re- 
garding this as one of our vital national social needs. 

The other national need of which I would speak is a clearly 
defined national social purpose. I doubt if the ideal with which 

1 Discussion at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 19, 1912. 

(59o) 



TWO NATIONAL SOCIAL NEEDS \\j 

our fathers set out is adequate to-day to command and organize 
and unify our national social life. It is true that their watch- 
word was democracy, but democracy as they conceived it was 
simply the child of liberty. Make way for liberty, and de- 
mocracy was sure to follow. A free field for endeavor the state 
must furnish. Within that field men must be let alone to work 
out their fortunes. I do not mean that this was the whole of 
the political philosophy of the fathers, but they put the em- 
phasis on this, and their faith was strong that liberty was the 
sovereign solution of all social problems. We have come to 
the point where we can see that this idea must be greatly ex- 
panded, and perhaps subordinated to a higher idea. It is 
beginning to be evident that our nation has a larger and worthier 
task than merely to set the people free. It must show them 
how to work together for the common good. The ideal state 
is not one that is content to form a ring, to furnish ropes and 
an umpire, to formulate rules of the game, and then invite its 
citizens to go in for a free fight. It is one which assumes 
rather that the normal relations of men are those of cooperation 
instead of conflict, and that the business of the state is not to 
furnish a ring for a struggle, but to assist and foster and direct 
all useful and practicable cooperations. This is not saying that 
all industries shall be managed collectively, for I doubt if that 
is possible. Many of them can best be left to individual initia- 
tive, but many of the most important of them are managed now 
by the cooperation of all of us through the commonwealth, and 
that number will surely be considerably increased. I am think- 
ing not so much of the economic as of the social aspects of this 
problem. Rather, I mean that the social aspects must take 
precedence in our national thinking. The human fact is first, 
the economic fact second. We are brothers before we are 
competitors. On the deck of the Titanic we get down to primal 
relations. Competition is barred. We are helpers one of 
another. That is what makes civilization possible, and it is this 
great truth which must be recognized and made fundamental in 
national life. All our commonwealths must be based on right 
human relations. Not strife, but good will, is the regulative 
principle of human society. 

(S9i) 



RECREATION AND YOUTH « 

DR. LUTHER H. GULICK 

RECREATION I shall discuss from two standpoints. 
First, from the standpoint of social engineering, I 
propose to consider a definite plan of a constructive 
character which has been put into operation. This plan has 
endeavored to correlate the various human incentives to activity 
with the known methods of social progress, in order to discover 
whether a social organization could be made so large that it 
would reach a great portion of all the girls of America, so 
simple that average people could run it, and so beautiful that 
the girls would want to enter it, not because it was good but 
because it was beautiful and romantic. So far as I know, noth- 
ing of this precise kind has ever before been attempted, and as 
a pure experiment in the field of social engineering it is perhaps 
worthy of consideration. 

The second standpoint is that of the philosophy of construc- 
tion as contrasted with the philosophy of prevention. No living 
mountain stream can be dammed with safety, no matter what 
devastation the spring freshets may bring. The evil will only 
be accentuated by damming, and the disaster made greater. 
The only thing worth while that can be done is to provide a 
better bed for the stream. 

Human instincts and desires are the great flowing streams of 
human life. It is not to be considered that human instincts 
and desires should be dammed, lest they go astray and do 
damage. Damming them only produces added devastation. 

The Chicago vice report was a strong and able piece of 
work, but to my mind utterly hopeless. To spend serious time 
and effort in this day and generation surveying the amount of 
damage which comes because a great stream has broken its dam 
and is devastating the country below it, to measure the amount 

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 19, 191 2. 

(592) 



RECREATION AND YOUTH I 19 

of the devastation and resolve merely to build bigger and better 
dams against the evil is fatuous. The tremendous task society 
must perform is to find out what constitute wholesome relations 
between men and women under the new conditions of our cities. 
Boys and girls no longer have the wholesome things to do in 
the community which during all ages they have had to do ; that 
is, we have put up the dams. We all know well enough that 
broken dams make endless waste. Our effort and our skill must 
be devoted to finding means whereby the splendid instinctive 
feelings of life may have splendid course. It is not merely 
that the river must be prevented from doing harm, but the 
water of life itself must not be wasted, because our desires, our 
hopes, our ambitions, the things we love, constitute life itself. 
It is not eating nor working nor sleeping that makes life signifi- 
cant; it is the things that we desire, the things that we hope for, 
the adventure of life itself. 

Because of the machine, and the necessary routine ways of 
working due to the machine, life for a great many people has 
become full of drudgery, and against steady drudgery human 
life revolts. At a recent meeting in Cooper Union a young 
man in the audience told how he went to bed every night, slept, 
got up every morning and went to work, back home again at 
night and to bed, and that was all of life there was for him. 
That represents the possible attainment of life for a large frac- 
tion of our population, but that is not living. Adventure is the 
fundamental thing of the soul. Without brilliant color in liv- 
ing, without possible human attainment, aside from drudgery, 
life appears insignificant. 

The movement of which I speak, the Campfire Girls, is an 
attempt to show that romance and adventure belong to every 
day. The old days of physical adventure have gone for most 
of us. Present-day adventure must be in the social field, the 
most available unexplored world. If we can provide ways in 
which adventure can count in connection with everyday work, 
we may help direct the flow of the powerful streams of human 
instinct, those tremendous streams which lead boys and girls in 
their teens to want to know each other. Merely to try to pre- 
vent the bad dance-hall and to dam up the other channels of 

(593) 



120 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

this kind without giving attention to the providing of a new 
and better bed for the stream is inadequate. This movement 
is an attempt to find adventure related to daily life in the 
everyday world. 

When a girl appears before her Campfire and reports that 
she has learned to make ten standard soups ; or that she is able 
to recognize fifteen kinds of birds by their songs ; or that she can 
describe three kinds of baby cries and tell the cause of each ; — 
things which are equally matters of scientific observation — or 
that she has walked forty miles in ten days, walking to and from 
the office or in the woods ; or that she has slept for two months 
with windows open ; or that she has kept a daily classified ac- 
count for one month; or that she has organized the girls of 
her street to beautify their yards, and that she has received 
for each of these an award of honor, something which can be 
added to her attire, the spirit of romance has been suggested 
to her. Perhaps to receive this honor she wears her ceremonial 
costume, a straight dress of galatea with fringe on the borders, 
which she has made herself at a total cost of sixty cents. Pos- 
sibly her camp name is the Raven and she wears a head dress 
suggestive of the name she bears as she stands very straight to 
receive the beads which are the symbol of award — the red beads 
which indicate attainment in health, or the blue beads, forming 
a necklace, which indicate attainment in out-of-door craft, or 
those beads which indicate proficiency in domestic things, tak- 
ing care of the baby for a month, planning the family expendi- 
ture for food at $2 a week for each person, and seeing that it 
is carried out, doing the family marketing for one month — as she 
stands before the Campfire and receives these tokens, the 
things which are everyday drudgery are thereby indicated as 
romantic and adventuresome. 

When a girl is learning to distinguish three kinds of baby 
cries or to make ten standard soups, it is not a part of an un- 
measured, long-continued daily grind ; putting the girl's work 
into definite attainable parts makes possible for the first time 
the measurement of woman's work. The most profound dif- 
ference at present between the work of men and women, in the 
production of mechanical things, is that man's work is measured 

(594) 



No. 4] RECREA TION AND YO UTH 1 2 I 

by dollars or pounds or inches, and women's work is unmeas- 
ured. No scientific adjustment is possible save upon a basis of 
measurement, and woman's work has never been measured ; it 
is simply repetition, one thing after another, without begin- 
ning, without end. Women and girls no longer have their 
status in a community because of doing woman's work or fem- 
inine things. They are known by other things not necessarily 
feminine, which are merely human. Women have never ac- 
quired status according to the new standards of measurement, 
and the old standards are going. The consequence is that 
woman's work has become simply an endless round of drudgery. 
The Campfire movement is an attempt at regularity in handling 
all the things of daily life which are worth while, except those 
of the school, which already has an accepted status, and to cut 
them up into parcels that are attainable, thus serving as a basis 
for romantic achievement. 

It seems at first as if this were merely a device to throw a 
bit of glamor over things which are in themselves dull and 
gray and leaden. But it is much more than this. It is not a 
disguise, but a transformation. Sleeping with one's window 
open because it is one's duty is an entirely different thing from 
doing it because it is one step in an adventure. Learning to care 
for the table and to cook because it is a thing every girl should 
know is one thing; learning to make ten standard soups, or 
two ways of making bread, or four ways of making cake, or 
four ways of cooking left-over meat, because they are part of a 
definite social status, is quite another thing. 

Aside from making the daily life show the adventure side 
there is another reason for this sort of thing. During these 
two generations woman's world is being readjusted. Instead of 
being merely in the home, woman's work has gone out into the 
community, but it remains still woman's work. Education, the 
work of marketing, the care of the laundry have all practically 
gone out. Marketing is done in stores, bread is cooked in the 
bakery, not at home, our laundry is cared for in laundries ; but 
all this nevertheless remains woman's work. If the work is 
badly done the reason is that she has let go her age-long task, 
she has not yet followed it out of the home as she should. If 

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122 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

woman is to have the same kind of relation to the world's work 
in the future that she has had in the past, she must reach out 
in the community and take hold again of those things which 
have always been fundamentally feminine. That is the new 
patriotism. The movement of women toward the stores, fac- 
tories and workshops is but the first step toward the readjust- 
ment of women to the work of the world. 

(596) 



REGULATION OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS 1 

MRS. BELLE LINDNER ISRAELS 
Chairman, Committee on Amusement Resources of Working Girls 

IT is only three and a half years since the first suggestion was 
made that public amusements might be regulated by 
statute ; and we were told then by thinkers and students 
that we were planning an almost impossible thing. Yet to-day 
we are discussing the regulation of public amusements as a 
national social question. 

In the city of Cleveland, Ohio, on any Saturday night, there 
are ten thousand boys and girls in public dance-halls, and we 
do not know how many additional thousands in motion-picture 
shows and theaters or attending private parties. In the city of 
Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, where they have a population of 
about 65,000, between five and six thousand people nightly are 
visiting amusement places of all kinds, dance-halls, motion- 
picture shows, vaudeville theaters and the like. In New York 
city in any one week about one hundred thousand boys and 
girls may learn to dance in dancing academies alone. In view 
of such facts is it not worth while to consider whether the com- 
munity ought to regulate public amusements? 

Have we no responsibility toward the thousands of young 
people who, night after night, throughout the whole country, 
make use of public amusement facilities? The story is the same 
in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Denver, San Fran- 
cisco. Everywhere we find the same standards, the same re- 
sources, affording the same resulting dangers, the same class of 
people making use of these places, and, alas, the same ignorance 
with regard to the effect on the lives of young people. 

There are only two methods by which we may deal with the 
problem of public amusements. One is regulation by statute, 
and the other is regulation by public opinion. Regulation by 
statute works, if the statute is adequate and receives sincere 
enforcement. New York is the pioneer in regulation by statute. 

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 19, 191 2. 

(597) 



124 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

Fifteen cities throughout the country have followed New York's 
example and either have enacted regulations governing public 
amusements or are considering it, and in six other cities the 
question of regulation is being studied and has not yet reached 
the stage of submission to the public. An efficient regulation 
of public amusements must take account of two things : the 
amusements themselves and the conditions under which the 
amusements are offered. No regulation is effectual that simply 
considers the amusement by itself. Statutory regulation of the 
dance hall to-day deals primarily with the conditions under 
which dancing is offered. It licenses premises in which dancing 
goes on, and in only two cities, thus far, has it gone farther than 
that and dealt with the amusement itself or with the individuals 
offering that amusement. In the cities where the dance-hall 
regulation has gone so far as to require that every public dance 
offered shall have a license, the regulation has been most effec- 
tive ; it therefore seems reasonably clear that that is the only 
way in which we can effectively regulate public dancing. First, 
we must place conditions upon the conduct of the premises 
themselves, and then upon the kind of amusements taking place 
on those premises. 

This applies with equal force to the motion-picture theater, 
the vaudeville theater, and the burlesque show. For a few 
years, until we educate public opinion, we may need a moral 
and educational censorship. This ought to be cooperative as 
between managers of amusement enterprises and the public. 
This would prevent such obscenities as are to-day being uttered 
upon the boards of some of the burlesque theaters in New York 
from coming before the enormous audiences of boys and young 
men who frequent them. 

Public opinion regulates all forms of amusements, not only 
those requiring an admission fee, but the public parks and the 
free amusements offered by the city. Public opinion says how 
many lights there shall be in a park at night; how many lights 
there shall be on a recreation pier ; what kind of people shall 
supervise these places ; what sort of amusements they shall 
offer, in addition to being breathing spots or ornamental show 
places. Public opinion may also regulate private enterprise, 
but public opinion has to be educated to appreciate the need 

(598) 



No. 4] REGULA TION OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS \ 2 5 

for regulating private enterprise. Private amusement enterprises 
to-day are the open door for the social evil. It is in these 
places of amusement where girls go unguarded and unsupervised 
that they are sought for by men and women who mean no good 
to them. We have the right to demand that these places shall 
be socially supervised since they cannot be personally super- 
vised. By social supervision I mean the supervision that is 
given by the community as a whole through inspection. Until 
we have sufficient publicity regarding the conditions of public 
amusement enterprises, we shall not have efficient public cen- 
sorship of the kind that really forms and guides public opinion 
into action. The needs of the poor are something broader and 
more human than merely shelter, clothing and sufficient food. 
The little child, the boy and girl and the father and mother 
need a relief from the tasks of the daily round of life just as 
keenly as they need food and clothing and shelter. We bring 
art into our lives because of its cultural and softening influence 
upon ourselves and our children. We need to bring it whole- 
somely and carefully and sanely into the lives of all our people ; 
we need to see that they get the right kind of recreation, because 
recreation is an art, too. The wrong kind of recreation has dis- 
astrous results ; the right kind, even if it be so humble a thing 
as a five-cent moving-picture show, may bring about an uplift 
that is equal to almost any form of art. The film that shows 
Indian life in Bombay may open a whole new world to a woman 
who has had neither life nor soul outside of her washtubs all day. 
Thus we owe a public duty to each of the millions of people 
availing themselves of the commercial forms of recreation. 
We must see to it that the places where they are offered amuse- 
ment are safe and wholesome and decent, and that the wrong 
kind of people are kept out. It can be done by statute. It 
can be required that every night in the week there shall be 
someone whose duty it is to see that every place in the city is 
properly conducted. An inspector of dance halls can be re- 
quired, as in Cleveland, to know not only every dance hall in his 
city, but the committee of every club which applies for the use 
of any of those dance halls. He should determine whether 
the group which represents " The Jolly Tumblers " or " The 
Four Leaved Clover " is a proper group to be allowed to con- 

(599) 



126 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

duct a public ball to which girls may come. Not only can 
this be done, but it is being done. There is at least one man 
who knows and controls absolutely, by virtue of statutory power, 
just what goes on in every public ball-room in the city of which 
he is the public inspector. 

For a practical working program in the regulation of public 
amusements the first requirement is knowledge. The church, 
the school and social organizations of every kind need to know 
at first hand what the amusement forces of their neighborhood 
are ; need to know what they are doing, and how they affect 
the lives of the people. On this basis they must make out a 
constructive program. 

Any constructive plan must allow not only for regulation, 
but for substitution of the right kind of resources for the 
wrong kind. The city must have recreation centers and 
amusement places conducted for the people who cannot, or 
will not, or need not pay for what they get. The city owes a 
recreational duty to these people. But we must also keep a 
watchful eye upon what is offered to the public commercially 
in the guise of amusement. If we are able to show to the 
management of all amusement places that we can control their 
audiences so as to make it pay to offer wholesome, decent per- 
formances, they will give such performances. Once we can 
show the dance hall that it need not sell liquor or entertain the 
underworld in order to make money, we have taken a long 
step toward making dancing as wholesome and safe as it 
ought to be. 

Fundamentally, however, we must admit to ourselves and to 
the world that young people and old ones as well need and will 
have recreation. Play is not a luxury, but an absolute neces- 
sity to the working world to-day. The regulation of amuse- 
ment is nothing more than the extension, socially, broadly, 
generally, of the supervision that wise men and women give in 
a private capacity to the young people with whom they associ- 
ate from day to day. Even though we do not personally 
associate with the boys and girls who make up the five 
millions annually using the dance-halls in New York city, we 
must appreciate our responsibilities toward them. We tend 

rapidly to that point. 

(600) 



COMMERCIALIZED VICE 1 

GEORGE J. KNEELAND 2 
Director Department of Investigation, American Vigilance Association 

TO my mind the most significant fact brought to light by 
the report of the Chicago Vice Commission is this, that 
public prostitution is a commercialized business of large 
proportions, yielding tremendous profits each year, and con- 
trolled largely by men and not by women as is commonly 
supposed. 

The yearly profit from this business in Chicago is estimated 
to be over $15,000,000. This statement is based upon daily 
account books kept by keepers of houses of ill-fame, some of 
them used as exhibits in court cases, and in addition those 
seized in raids upon such houses by the authorities. It is also 
based upon the testimony of madams and inmates of houses, 
on the known profits from the rental of property and from the 
sale of liquor in houses and saloons where women are permitted 
to solicit and sell drinks on a twenty or forty per cent 
commission. 

That this estimate of yearly profits is ultra-conservative is 
seen from the fact that it is based upon the exploitation of only 
3194 professional prostitutes, who were actually known to the 
police or were discovered by the investigators for the Vice 
Commission. 

The recent report of an investigation of the police depart- 
ment in Chicago by the civil service commission declared that 
the number of professional prostitutes in that city was nearer 
20,000 than 5,000 and that 15,000 is a conservative estimate. 

The second significant fact brought out by the Chicago re- 
port is that this enormous profit goes not only to degenerate 
and vicious men who make a profession of the exploitation of 

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 19, 1912. 

2 Formerly Director of Investigation, Vice Commission of Chicago. 

(601) 



128 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

women, but is shared also by ostensibly respectable men and 
women in the community who rent or lease their property for 
this business. What is true in Chicago is true in every other 
large American city where the social vice is tolerated or at least 
winked at by the public and the authorities. 

These facts explain many of the difficulties met with in 
securing adequate enforcement of state laws and city ordinances 
in certain municipalities. They explain why efforts to secure 
the revocation of licenses of disorderly saloons and disreputable 
hotels are so meager of results. They are at the basis of the 
demoralization of police discipline. They furnish some of the 
sinews of war whereby corrupt politicians are elevated to power. 
With these facts in mind, why do we wonder at the extent of 
the white-slave traffic, and the difficulty of securing proper pun- 
ishment, or any punishment at all, for many of those who buy 
and sell our women and girls? 

This profit is the reason for the army of " cadets," politi- 
cal guerrillas, exploiters and scoundrels who live on the earnings 
of these unfortunate women who are led to think the life easy. 

It also accounts for the other commercial interests that sup- 
port and live upon this evil — the druggists, the fake doctors, the 
costumers and all those who cater to the trade of the prostitute. 
She is peculiarly susceptible to all forms of graft; for every- 
thing she buys she pays more than a double price in actual 
dollars. 

Whenever an attempt is made to study the social evil and to 
offer recommendations for its repression we hear the conten- 
tion from the morally inert that nothing can be done ; that this 
evil " always has existed and always will." We may grant for 
the moment that a certain proportion of unfortunate women 
always have drifted and perhaps always will drift into profes- 
sionally immoral lives through inherited vicious tendencies. 
But let us have faith enough in womanhood to believe that this 
percentage is small, and that the great majority — and some hold 
eighty percent of the total — take up the life through ignorance, 
are forced into it against their will or are driven into it by the 
deception, lust and greed of men. We believe that certain of 
these conditions can be corrected, and many women and girls 
of the future saved to society. 

(602) 



No. 4 ] COMMERCIALIZED VICE 1 29 

Realizing these facts The American Vigilance Association, 1 
recently organized, has conceived a program of work which 
strikes at the root of the problem. The plan of operation is 
centralized in eight departments, namely : 

Organization and Promotion 

Legislation and Law Enforcement 

International Co-Operation 

Investigation 

Library and Editorial 

Literature 

Education 

Rescue and Protection 

As an illustration, through the department of organization 
and promotion the association desires to interest a large num- 
ber of citizens and organizations, and to correlate so far as 
possible the work of philanthropists, educators and reformers. 

In time it is planned to have city, state and foreign powers 
so effectually aroused and cooperating to such an extent that 
the men exploiters of women and the white slavers will be 
completely exterminated. 

When a town or city desires to join in the campaign against 
commercialized vice, the association will be prepared to assist 
it. As a practical program it will recommend, first, a careful 
survey and study of vice conditions in the city ; next, upon the 
basis of a convincing and reliable report, a campaign to arouse 
the public conscience to its moral and civic duty; third, the 
securing of convictions, with the aid of public opinion and by 
help of lawyers skilled in conducting this particular class of 
prosecutions ; and lastly, so far as is practicable, an educational 
campaign for the betterment of public and private morals. 

1 New York address, 156 Fifth avenue. Chicago, 105 West Monroe street. 

(603) 



THE PROBLEM OF WAYWARD GIRLS AND 
DELINQUENT WOMEN 

MAUDE E. MINER 
Secretary of the New York Probation Association 

WE are only beginning to study the problem of the way- 
ward girl and to discover something about the causes 
of her waywardness and the best method of treating 
her after she has become delinquent. If we can fully under- 
stand the girls and women who are now passing through the 
courts and prisons and deal effectively with them, a larger 
number can ultimately be returned to society as useful members 
and in the future many can be prevented from reaching the 
courts. We have long been accustomed to consider the sen- 
tence imposed upon the woman offender by the court as a pun- 
ishment, having as its object the deterring of women from similar 
acts in the future and the protecting of society by incarcerating 
the criminal. More recently a new light has been dawning on 
the horizon and we have been seeing that the women are not 
really criminal and that the interests of society can be better 
served by helping rather than by punishing them. What 
methods can be employed to help in the wisest and best way 
those who have reached the courts and by what means we can 
prevent more young girls from joining the ranks of the wayward 
and becoming delinquent, are the most important questions in 
connection with the problem of the delinquent girl. 

The offenses for which girls and women are brought to the 
courts include soliciting on the streets for prostitution, intoxica- 
tion, vagrancy, incorrigibility, larceny, and the more serious 
crimes of robbery, forgery and the like. Only a small per- 
r— centage of the convicted women are found guilty of the serious 
offenses and we find that there is no criminal class of women, as 
such, living by their acts of crime. Of the 11,273 cases in 
which women were convicted or held for trial in a higher court 
in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx during the year 

(604) 



l 



WAYWARD GIRLS AND DELINQUENT WOMEN i 3I 

191 1, only 256 cases involved a crime of the grade of felony. 
The largest groups were composed of those convicted of of- 
fenses relating to prostitution and intoxication. By far the 
greatest number of women had been leading a professionally 
immoral life. 

The failure of the present method of dealing with the women 
in the courts is shown by the fact that so many return to the 
court again and again for the same offense and that in such a 
small percentage of cases is anything helpful done. Of the 
1 1,273 cases during 191 1, there were 4,869 commitments to the 
workhouse on Blackwell's Island and 3,820 fines imposed. In the 
two magistrates' courts in the borough of Manhattan where the 
largest number are brought for prostitution — the women's night 
court and the Jefferson Market day court — there were, during 
191 1, 5,365 arraignments of women charged with soliciting on 
the streets and carrying on prostitution in tenement houses, and 
4)739 convictions in these cases. This number represented 
2,612 different women, as the finger-print record showed that 
there were 2,127 repeaters who have been convicted from two 
to eight times. Of the women convicted of prostitution, there 
were 3,329 commitments to the workhouse and 882 fines im- 
posed. In less than ten per cent of the cases were women 
released on probation or committed to reformatory institutions. 

The workhouse sentence is not helpful in any way and there 
is no reformative influence in the institution. Between 500 and 
600 women are herded in 131 cells and two hospital wards, and 
frequently there are four or five or even a larger number of 
women in one cell. Segregation of the different classes of 
offenders is impossible, and women arrested for intoxication, 
disorderly conduct, larceny and prostitution mingle freely 
together. At times young girls seventeen and eighteen years 
of age are placed in the same cell with hardened women. 
Nothing is done to help the women when they leave the work- 
house and the only way open to them is to return to their 
former mode of living. The short sentences of five or ten days, 
of which there are so many, are utterly futile and do not deter 
the women from continuing their life of prostitution and openly 
soliciting on the streets. 

(605) 



132 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

The imposing of a fine of from $i to $10 serves neither to 
deter nor to help a woman. If she has not the money with 
which to pay the fine, she can usually secure it from one of her 
friends and can readily pay it back as soon as she returns to 
her life of prostitution. The number of fines imposed upon 
women for soliciting on the streets has greatly diminished dur- 
ing the last year, yet many were imposed during 191 1 for this 
offense. We convict men and send them to prison for living 
on the earnings of prostitution and yet without protest we allow 
these fines — the proceeds of prostitution — to enter into the 
sinking fund of our city. The fining system is practically a 
license system and should be abolished. 

The present method of dealing with the women, as we see, is 
inadequate and ineffective. It involves immense cost to the 
city in maintaining courts, station houses, district prisons and 
workhouse. It accomplishes little in helping these women or 
in deterring them or others from further violation of the law. 
Except in a small percentage of cases of women released on 
probation and committed to reformatory institutions, the good 
of the individual is not consulted and the sentences are not im- 
posed with the idea that the defendant will be improved in any 
way. 

How can we more effectively help the woman offender who 
comes into the courts? By thoroughly understanding the needs 
of the individual and applying a method of treatment suited to 
those individual needs. 

The judge sitting in the court of justice with the evidence 
before him can quickly decide upon the guilt or innocence of 
the accused, but he cannot quickly judge as to the wisest and 
best method of dealing with the offender. That must be based 
upon a thorough knowledge and investigation of the past his- 
tory and character of the woman and upon adequate mental 
and physical examinations. 

To make possible an adequate study of the individual girl 
and woman and to determine the treatment suited to the needs 
of the individual, the work of the judge should cease after the 
defendant has been convicted and a commission composed of 
specialists should have charge of investigations and examina- 

(606) 



No. 4] WA YWARD GIRLS AND DELINQ UENT WOMEN i 3 3 

tions necessary to decide what disposition should be made in 
the cases, and should have power to make such final dispositions. 
A summary of this proposed plan is as follows : 

I. Appointment of a commission of specialists to receive 
under commitment women convicted by the courts. 

II. Thorough investigation and examination of convicted 
women under the direction of the commission. This includes : 

(1) The taking of a complete history and record. 

(2) Investigation of past history, home environment and 
previous work. 

(3) Mental examination to determine whether women 
are feeble-minded, insane or constitutionally inferior, and a study 
of character defects. 

(4) Physical examination to determine whether women 
are suffering from venereal disease, tuberculosis or other in- 
fectious disease and are in need of medical care. 

III. Commitment of convicted women to suitable reformatory 
and custodial institutions and a restricted use of the probation 
system : 

(1) Release on probation of those who can reasonably 
be expected to reform in view of their mental, physical and 
moral condition, without commitment to an institution. 

(2) Commitment to custodial institutions of those need- 
ing permanent care because of mental condition. 

( 3 ) Commitment to the New York State Reformatory for 
Women at Bedford and the New York State Farm for Women 
of those eligible to these institutions. 

(4) Commitment of those needing institutional care, not 
eligible to other institutions, to an industrial farm colony under 
the control of the commission, to be established in place of the 
present workhouse on Blackwell's Island. 

The commission, itself an unpaid body appointed by the 
mayor of the city, would appoint the skilled investigators, physi- 
cian, neurologist and psychologist required for the work of in- 
vestigating the cases of the convicted women and making the 
necessary examinations. The decisions reached as to the best 
disposition of each case would be the result of the combined 
reports of these experts. 

(607) 



134 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

In making investigations of the cases all statements which 
help to an understanding of the individual should be verified. 
As far as possible the causes responsible for bringing her into 
trouble should be determined. If the girl's home is in a city 
other then New York, investigations should be made by proba- 
tion officers or some other duly authorized persons there. 
When she has been in an orphan asylum, reformatory or other 
institution, or has been previously arrested, these facts should 
be learned and the reports secured. 

In the large number of cases of women who have been so- 
liciting on the streets, special effort should be made to determine 
whether or not they have been associated with men who have 
been living on the earnings of prostitution, or who have pro- 
cured them for a life of prostitution, and corroborative evidence 
should be secured for the arrest and conviction of such persons. 
This would be the most effective means of breaking up the 
" cadet" system, which is so closely connected with the problem 
of women in prostitution. 

The mental examinations will make it possible to determine 
those who are mentally deficient and who are in need of perma- 
nent care. This class constitutes a considerable percentage of 
the women convicted of prostitution, although it is unknown 
how great the percentage is. As the result of careful observa- 
tion, it is estimated that approximately one-third of the immoral 
girls who have been received into Waverley House are subnor- 
mal mentally. It is only humane to care permanently for these 
mentally deficient and feeble-minded women in custodial institu- 
tions for their own sake and in order to prevent increase in 
number of this class. 

Provision must be made for the different classes of women in 
suitable institutions where they will receive the kind of treat- 
ment which they need. To take the place of the present work- 
house, there is needed a new institution, where extended obser- 
vation of women can be made, if necessary, before they are 
transferred to other institutions, and where there can be adequate 
provision for trade instruction and medical care. The habitual 
offenders — women convicted five times within a period of two 
years — can be sent to the New York State Farm for Women 

(608) 



No. 4] WAYWARD GIRLS AND DELINQUENT WOMEN 135 

as soon as that institution is completed. Many of the older 
women now committed to the workhouse for intoxication would 
be sent to the state farm under the provision of the present law. 
Bedford Reformatory will continue to receive some of the women 
under thirty years of age who have been convicted of prostitu- 
tion as well as those guilty of the more serious offenses. 

Probation remains for the chosen few whose minds are not 
too poisoned by the life they have been leading and for whom 
there seems to be a real chance of reform without commitment 
to an institution. Many of these will be first offenders and 
there will be others who have been convicted before, but have 
never had a chance to try again. Effective probation work in- 
cludes visiting the women in their homes, securing employment 
for them, relating them to helpful influences, and truly befriend- 
ing them. It is a system of discipline and correction outside of 
an institution, dependent for its success largely upon the careful 
selection of probationers and the efficiency and fitness of the 
probation officers. The period of probation should be longer 
than at the present time and should extend over a year, at least, 
if changes in character and life are to be effected. In case of 
violation of the terms of probation the women should be re- 
turned to the commission for commitment. 

During the time while women are being held for trial they 
should remain in a house of detention, instead of in the dis- 
trict prisons as at the present time. As the result of the ex- 
periment made at Waverley House, officials of the New York 
Probation Association urged upon the Inferior Courts Commis- 
sion the necessity of providing a house of detention where 
women could remain while investigations were being made to 
determine the best disposition in their cases, and where the 
younger girls could be separated from the older women. The 
Inferior Courts Law passed June 25, 1910, made mandatory the 
establishment of a house of detention. The law provided as 
follows : 

There shall be established on or before October 1st, 19 10, a place of 
detention under the jurisdiction of the commissioner of correction, 
convenient to the night court for women, where women may be detained 

(609) 



136 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

both before and after being heard, and in such detention place the 
young and less hardened shall be segregated so far as practicable from 
the older and more hardened offenders. 

Provision has not yet been made for this house of detention 
although repeated requests have been made for an issue of cor- 
porate stock necessary for its erection. It is planned to have a 
new building erected in conjunction with a court for women 
where all women arrested in the boroughs of Manhattan and the 
Bronx will be arraigned. The court room on the ground floor 
of the building should be small, so as to accommodate few 
spectators. The house of detention should contain from 300 
to 350 single rooms instead of cells, and five divisions for the 
different classes, — three for white and two for colored women. 
Offices for probation officers, psychologist and physician should 
be provided in this building. 

By having the women arraigned in a central court, providing 
for them adequately in a house of detention, extending the 
finger-print method of identification to all convicted women and 
then dealing effectively with the convicted women according to 
the plan described, a long step forward will be taken in solving 
the problem of the delinquent women in our courts. 

How can we prevent more girls from becoming wayward and 
delinquent? By pursuing constantly a policy of suppression of 
the social evil, bringing to justice the white-slave traffickers -, im- 
proving conditions at home and at work, providing proper re- 
creational facilities for girls and giving to men and women 
higher ideals and standards of morality. 

When our girls see many women soliciting on the thorough- 
fares of our city and meet others who are frequenting " call 
houses " and massage parlors and cafes, they hear that it is "easy" 
and they are induced to enter the life. Others come in through 
the influence of the procurers and white-slave traffickers, who 
under promise of marriage, by " fake" marriage and even at 
times by force and violence secure young girls for a life of pros- 
titution. Many of the girls come from homes where there has 
been no helpful influence and no moral or religious teaching. 
Often they have left the home without preparation for work or 

(610) 



No. 4] WAYWARD GIRLS AND DELINQUENT WOMEN 137 

for life. The pressure has been very great and temptations 
have come to them which they have not been strong enough to 
resist. With the grind of work and with little chance for re- 
creation and play except in dangerous places, they have often 
become discouraged or disheartened and have started on the 
pathway which leads downward. 

To improve conditions and protect our young girls and young 
boys as well, we can demand that street soliciting shall be abol- 
ished and the laws against prostitution enforced. We can help 
to bring to justice the men who profit from the shame of women. 
We can do much to improve the conditions under which our 
girls live and work, can provide wholesome recreation for them, 
can give them sex education and moral training as well, and can 
inspire them to nobler and better things. We can protect those 
who are mentally deficient by caring for them in custodial insti- 
tutions long before the time when they are in danger of entering 
prostitution. 

The New York Probation Association each year helps many 
of the girls who have erred morally, by caring for them at 
Waverley House, securing positions for them and bringing help- 
ful influences to bear so that it is possible for them to live 
honest, useful lives. It aids in bringing white-slave traffickers 
and procurers to justice, and witnesses in these cases remain at 
Waverley House while cases are pending in the courts. The 
association is also doing protective work for the girls who are 
in grave moral danger, and its protective officers are at work in 
different districts in the city. This year protective leagues have 
been organized for the sake of securing the help of a large 
number of girls in protecting other girls. The objects of these 
leagues are as follows : 

1. To protect other girls from moral danger. 

2. To help in suppressing the white slave traffic. 

3. To encourage pure thinking and clean conversation. 

4. To promote moral education and knowledge of sex hygiene. 

5. To secure wholesome recreation for girls. 

6. To stimulate faith in the possibilities of life. 

In the protective work we have had the cooperation of a 
number of churches which have helped in maintaining our 

(611) 



138 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

protective officers and which refer to us from time to time girls 
who are in moral danger, cooperating with us in the cases of 
individual girls. 

There is much that all of us can do to help in solving the 
problem of wayward and delinquent girls. In helping to secure 
the adoption of a more rational policy for dealing with women 
offenders in the courts throughout Greater New York ; in aiding 
individual girls and women in connection with the probation 
work of the courts, the reformatories and volunteer associa- 
tions such as the New York Probation Association ; in helping 
to suppress the social evil and demanding that existing laws be 
enforced ; in seeking to improve conditions at home, at work, 
and at play so as to prevent more girls from becoming way- 
ward ; and in bringing to the great mass of men and women 
more moral and religious training and so reaching the hearts of 
men that they will more truly love their neighbors as themselves, 
truly effective work can be done in the solution of this great 
problem. 

(612) 



THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN 

C. C. Carstens 

Secretary and General Agent of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of 

Cruelty to Children 

THE organized movement for the protection of children 
started in 1874 by the organization of the New York 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This 
was three years before the first charity organization society was 
organized in Buffalo and eight years after the organization of 
the first society for the prevention of cruelty to animals in New 
York city. 

The fact that the organized work in behalf of animals had 
preceded the work in behalf of children by some years is of 
importance when one seeks to understand the development of 
the later movement. Prosecution work in behalf of helpless 
animals had proved its usefulness in giving expression in a 
tangible way to the desire to enforce humane standards in deal- 
ing with dumb animals in distress. The helplessness of children 
and the protection they needed from cruel and abusive treat- 
ment led to an analogous movement in behalf of children. Its 
value and effectiveness, wherever such an organization has been 
intelligently and vigorously administered, few will question. 
This analogy, while pointing the way toward the establishment 
of an effective agency for children, also resulted in a tendency 
to emphasize those forms of protection which were based upon 
law enforcement and gave a strong trend in the direction of 
having such societies become from the first adjuncts to the 
police departments where offenses against children were con- 
cerned as well as where children were the offenders. 

Since the prevention of cruelty concerned itself principally 
with the enforcement of law and the punishment of the offender, 
at first only the grosser and more patent offenses were recog- 
nized. The vigorous work of these societies immediately made 
its impress upon the community and established humane stand- 

(613) 



I 4 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

ards that have very much reduced the amount of cruelty in its 
various forms throughout the world. 

But the term " cruelty" like the term " charity" in our more 
recent philanthropic development has taken on a new meaning, 
a broadening significance. No longer interpreted only as a 
malicious act inflicting severe pain, it is now more often inter- 
preted to mean such conduct on the part of parent or guardian 
as threatens the life or health of a child. As our communities 
have become increasingly sensitive to new forms of protection, 
workers in the prevention of cruelty have recognized as cruelty 
the results of intemperance, vice, non-support, abandonment, 
desertion and other crimes on the part of the adults in their 
dealings with their own or others' children. 

While it is fully recognized that a brutal beating requires in- 
tervention on the child's behalf as before, association with 
vicious or immoral persons not only corrupts the body but also 
sears the child's soul. It is equally recognized that a commu- 
nity's neglect to protect the safety and health of its children is as 
serious as parents' neglect to protect their own children, and 
even more difficult to guard against. The wider significance of 
the term " cruelty " can perhaps be illustrated by a few instances 
of abuse. 

A nine-year-old Jewish boy, a full orphan, came with his aunt 
from Russia, the latter having represented him to be her son so 
that she might have no difficulty to get him admitted. After a 
year's stay with this family, the boy was driven out to go to 
another relative who had, however, no more use for him. He 
tried to make his own living by selling newspapers but without 
much success. He slept wherever he could find shelter and 
stole when hunger drove him to it. It was prevention of cruelty 
that led to the boy's being given a chance to get wholesome 
training in a good home. The immigration authorities when 
apprised of the deceit issued a warrant for his apprehension so 
that he might be deported, but when it was found that no one 
of his own flesh and blood remained in Russia except a crippled 
brother, it was prevention of cruelty when guarantees were fur- 
nished that he should not become a public dependent if he were 
given an opportunity to grow up in this land. 

(614) 



No. 4] PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN I4I 

A wife and four children of a deserting husband had reached 
the point where hunger stared them in the face, with the alterna- 
tive of dependence on charity, from whose acceptance they 
shrank with a feeling akin to desperation. It was prevention of 
cruelty which led the society, after much trouble, to locate the 
man, secure an indictment, bring about extradition from another 
state, and arrange such terms of his parole as would save the 
family from dependence upon others for their daily bread and 
would give opportunities of education to the children. 

A twelve-year-old girl, whose mother had disposed of her as 
a baby in a home found by means of a newspaper advertisement, 
and who had been sent back to this mother after twelve years, 
was once more advertised for acceptance in a new home. With- 
out inquiry of any sort, the little girl was given her bundle, put 
on the train at a station in New Hampshire and sent to what the 
child believed was to be a rich and beautiful home in Boston. 
But the fi home" was a den of the worst infamy, and before the 
child had been there a week she had suffered the most shameful 
abuses. It was prevention of cruelty when the wretch to whom 
she was sent by her negligent mother was apprehended and was 
sentenced to a period in state prison and the child given into 
the care of a children's aid society that will attempt to atone for 
the parental negligence. But it is equally a prevention of 
cruelty to insist that newspapers should refuse to make possible 
through advertising in their columns such traffic in children. 

A twelve-year-old boy of intemperate parents was before the 
court on a charge of larceny. He had previously been before 
the court on a similar charge. When inquiry brought out the 
facts that he was a truant and quite backward in school, it 
was prevention of cruelty which brought about the discovery 
through a specialist's examination that he was feeble-minded 
and later his commitment to an institution where he may be 
protected from the temptations in community life that he seems 
unable to resist. 

The prevention of cruelty to children in its larger aspects 
therefore concerns itself with the establishment and maintenance 
of good community and family standards quite as much as any 
other social agency dealing with children in their family rela- 

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I4 2 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

tions. It requires that those who are incapable mentally and 
morally of controlling themselves for right action should be 
given an opportunity to work under surveillance in farm or 
other custodial colonies. It insists on the prompt reporting of 
infants suffering from ophthalmia neonatorum, so that important 
steps may be taken to save them from blindness. It requires 
that proper surgical and medical care be given to children that 
are in danger of growing up crippled, weak and dependent when 
the parents' stubbornness or neglect to accept the physician's 
skill are all that stand in the way of the child's regaining full 
health. 

These are but a few of the many ways in which the word 
"cruelty" means more than a brutal physical punishment, and 
those working in the prevention of cruelty to children soon find 
themselves, if the task is conceived broadly, as part of a large 
number of individuals and agencies working for social better- 
ment, each attacking the large problem from his own angle. 

In order that such work may not suffer therefore from over- 
lapping of energies, or from incomplete plans and partial results, 
the largest cooperation with other agencies is necessary. The 
distinctive task of societies for the prevention of cruelty to 
children is with family standards as they affect child life, but 
this sphere is so large that it becomes an important part in any 
large movement dealing with community standards. 

The emphasis which social agencies are throwing upon pre- 
vention has also begun to be felt by societies for the prevention 
of cruelty to children. It is no longer thought enough to rescue 
the child from degrading surroundings and place it in a new 
environment where it may be happy, become well, or grow up 
into self-respecting manhood or womanhood. It is also neces- 
sary to study the abuses that exist in our communities and that 
menace child life as problems in themselves ; to learn the steps 
in the process of degeneration ; to discover the causes, and to 
develop an orderly procedure for working out remedies. 

The prevention of cruelty should mean more than a preven- 
tion of recurrence. It should in time be such organized pro- 
tection and such development of community standards that 
most of the cruelty and neglect is stopped at the source. Much 

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No. 4] PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN ^3 

of this preventive work must be done with groups in the com- 
munity. While our native population neglects its children prin- 
cipally because of crime, cruelty, drunkenness or other vice, the 
newer immigrants, while suffering also from the effects of these 
conditions, in many more instances neglect their children 
because, through ignorance, they have failed to realize what the 
best American standards are and what opportunities are at hand 
by which their children may have better chances in this new 
world. Both groups need the help which better adapted 
schools, settlements and social centres will provide, and a society 
for the prevention of cruelty to children, while perhaps not 
directly conceiving of these enterprises as part of its task, 
should, if it would prevent cruelty, give the fullest encourage- 
ment to these agencies as far as they are efficiently managed. 

The inter-relation of work for the prevention of cruelty to 
children with other work in behalf of children is almost self- 
evident. When local or state boards of health have not yet 
equipped themselves to protect infants from blindness, it is pre- 
vention of cruelty to help enforce laws for infants' protection, 
or when these do not exist, to work for the necessary statutes 
to safeguard the infants' sight. And so in a similar way, such 
societies should work hand in hand with child labor committees, 
with societies undertaking to reduce infant mortality, depen- 
dence, pauperism, venereal infection and other conditions to 
whose serious import in the lives of children we are becoming 
increasingly sensitive. 

The experience of a society for the prevention of cruelty to 
children as an adjunct in law enforcement, its prestige with the 
court and among those who are prone to neglect their children, 
gives it unusual opportunities for interpreting to the court and 
the police departments those social standards in child-helping 
and protective work which these officials in the natural discharge 
of their exacting duties are prone to underestimate if not 
entirely to lose sight of. 

But the proximity of these societies to the courts and to the 
police has also brought with it grave dangers and harmful ten- 
dencies. Some of these private societies have become mere 
extensions of the police department. Where this is the case, 

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I4 4 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

either the protection of children has been left to the inadequate 
working force of a private society, thus giving the community 
less protection than if every officer charged with the enforce- 
ment of the law were required to know and to enforce the com- 
munity's standards in behalf of children and could call upon the 
private society to assist him in making suitable disposition for 
them, or where the force is sufficient, all of the private society's 
resources are apt to be given over to the enforcement of law, 
and the larger and more important task of the prevention of 
neglect and the remedy of conditions that are remediable is im- 
possible. This tendency to take part in law enforcement has 
further had the tendency to make these societies become the 
custodians of juvenile offenders, and in many instances their 
prosecutors as well. 

This task is so fundamental for the state itself to undertake 
that its assumption by a private society is constantly in danger 
of weakening the state's own responsibility for the protection of 
the juvenile offender, and it is so extensive that the private 
society finds itself unable to devote adequate resources to the 
prevention of physical and moral conditions in family life in 
which much juvenile delinquency arises and out of which a large 
measure of adult crime develops. 

A further danger arises in connection with societies for the 
prevention of cruelty to children due to their nearness to gov- 
ernmental agencies, i. e. y their lack of appreciation of their being 
after all private societies, responsible to their constituent mem- 
bers and subject to suitable inspection and direction by the 
properly constituted governmental agency so that their resources 
may not be used foolishly and their work may not be a detri- 
ment to the body politic. 

After all, a society for the prevention of cruelty to children, 
being a private society dependent on the generosity of the 
public, is but an organized expression of the community's inter- 
est in the protection of children. Because of its experience 
with legal procedure and law enforcement, it may be in a 
peculiarly helpful position toward other private organizations 
and church bodies. Visitors in family homes from societies 
and churches inevitably run across conditions that need to be 

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No. 4] PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN 145 

remedied, and the strong arm of the law must often be invoked 
to make intervention effective. Societies for the prevention of 
cruelty to children are ready to inquire into all instances where 
alleged neglect exists, and to work in cooperation with other 
agencies for the protection of the individual group of children 
that may be suffering, and what is even more important, will 
contribute of their experience to the community's knowledge 
as to how conditions may be remedied and how standards of 
family life may be permanently improved. 

(619) 



THE INSTITUTIONAL CARE OF CHILDREN 1 

HASTINGS H. HART 
Russell Sage Foundation 

IN listening to the addresses of the morning, I was impressed 
with their bearing upon the problem of institutional chil- 
dren, who number at the present time not less than 
125,000 in the orphan asylums, children's homes, and juvenile 
reformatories. These papers have suggested some of the forces 
that bring delinquent children into institutions. Child labor is 
a direct cause, as has been indicated, of boys becoming delin- 
quents. Boys who are overtaxed and deprived of proper edu- 
cational opportunities, whose parents look at the commercial 
advantages to be had from them, are quite liable to turn up in 
the juvenile court. The lack of proper regulation of amuse- 
ments is undoubtedly responsible for a large amount of juvenile 
delinquency. Its influence is exaggerated, but it is an import- 
ant factor. As regards the commercializing of vice, it is safe 
to say that at least eighty per cent — and I think ninety per cent 
— of all the young girls sent to industrial schools and institutions 
for delinquents have had an immoral experience. Many have 
been inmates of houses of prostitution. That is not all. The 
commercializing of vice means that the great majority of those 
girls, who after they have been through the institution start 
out with habits of right living and desires for it, immediately 
become objects of pursuit from the fact that they have been 
so marked, and they are exploited to an extraordinary degree. 
In connection with the future welfare of both the dependent 
and the delinquent child in institutions, the subjects that have 
been presented to us are vitally important. It is absolutely in- 
dsipensable to the normal development of the child that his 
recreation shall be right. I have visited hundreds of institutions 
for children, and I have made special studies of recreation, and 

discussion at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 19, 1912. 

(620) 



THE INSTITUTIONAL CARE OF CHILDREN i 4 y 

the truth is that there is little careful regulation of recreation in 
such institutions. I could cite institutions in New York and 
Philadelphia where two or three hundred boys are turned loose 
in a little playground where there is not room for more than 
thirty or forty ; and the big, active fellows get the playground 
and playthings, and the little boys stand around the edges and 
watch wistfully. These children do not have any spontaneity 
in life, and yet it is absolutely essential to their education. 

There is not one institution for children in twenty that follows 
the plan adopted by Mrs. Falconer in the girls' school in Phila- 
delphia — that of having directed play. She has a college- 
trained, well-bred young woman, who spends a large part of her 
time in studying how to use the leisure time of these girls to the 
best advantage. At the New York Orphanage, conducted by 
Dr. Reeder, the whole life of the child is studied ; and people 
come from all parts of the world to see that place, because 
there are not half a dozen institutions of this class among all 
those for dependent children. 

It is very evident that the last word has not been said on 
child labor in its relation to the institutional child. Institutional 
children must have wholesome occupation, and they should 
receive some kind of vocational training. But vocational train- 
ing in the institution is beset with difficulties. In the first place, 
as to boys, the most of those in our juvenile reformatories are 
two or three years below the normal in their intellectual, and, to 
a certain degree, in their physical development. If you under- 
take to keep such a boy long enough to give him a trade, he 
must remain in the institution three, five or seven years, and 
that means that he becomes institutionalized. Further than 
that, the process is exceedingly expensive if it is done right. 
You cannot give all institutional boys the same training. There 
is much nonsense talked now about making them all agricul- 
turists. The moment you go into the mechanical trades, 
you need expensive teachers and equipment that only a few 
institutions can afford. 

The vocational training of girls is simpler in a way, because 
the range of occupations that ought to be taught is not so large 
and because we recognize that every girl must learn domestic 

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1 48 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

science. With a domestic science teacher, a teacher of dress- 
making who is also a sewing teacher, and a teacher of typewrit- 
ing and bookkeeping, a considerable number of girls can be 
accommodated. As a matter of fact, however, and I speak 
advisedly, from actual knowledge, three-quarters of all the so- 
called vocational training for girls in institutions is a humbug 
and a fraud. The reports of these institutions state that " our 
girls are taught domestic science, cooking, house work, laundry 
work, sewing, dressmaking" and so on. The effort is made to 
give that instruction along with the daily routine of the institu- 
tion, but in nine-tenths of our institutions there is no daily 
routine that teaches the girl the ordinary work of life. In the 
institution the cooking and the washing are done by steam. 
How train a girl there to do ordinary cooking and washing? 

Not only that, but in three-quarters of the orphan asylums of 
this country that admit girls you will find a little group of older 
girls. One of these institutions states the reason in its annual 
report : " We cannot send these older girls out into homes ; it is 
not safe. The girls need the domestic training they will receive 
in the institution and the institution needs the help of its older 
daughters." Those girls are in the institution to help, to save 
hiring servants ; they are doing free domestic service. A girl 
can be given domestic training in the ordinary routine only if 
the institution is organized with cottages that accommodate from 
twelve to twenty at the outside, if the living is like the living in 
an ordinary family, if the cooking is done and the meals are 
served with the same care and dignity as in an ordinary family, 
if the dresses for the girls are cut and made with the same neat- 
ness and variety as in an ordinary family. I remember visiting 
an institution for children where I learned that the girls were 
being taught sewing. I went to see the girls' domestic work, 
and there was a beautiful room, with sewing machines run by 
electricity, with a machine to cut children's garments, fifteen or 
twenty garments at a time, a machine to make buttonholes, 
a machine to sew on buttons, a machine to do everything — and 
that was teaching the girls sewing ! 

As a result of it all, a wholesome reaction is occurring. We 
are coming to recognize that the institution is not the right 

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No. 4] THE INSTITUTIONAL CARE OF CHILDREN 149 

place to give the child domestic training. His stay in the insti- 
tution should be as brief as possible, and he should be quickly 
transplanted into the normal life of the community, there to find 
his opportunity and take his chance with the rest of the normal 
children. That means the development of the placing-out 
system. We are learning to select our homes with greater care ; 
to watch the child in order to see that he gets opportunity and 
training, and that he is not exploited to take the place of the 
hired servant. 

(623) 



THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 

WILLIAM O. STILLMAN 

President of the American Humane Association 

THE first law for the prevention of cruelty to animals was 
passed by the British Parliament in 1822. It was 
known as Martin's Act, having been introduced and 
passed through the efforts of Mr. Richard Martin, a member of 
the House of Commons from Ireland. This law applied 
particularly to domestic animals, and was incomplete from the 
modern humane point of view. It was, nevertheless, an enor- 
mous advance over the ideas which had previously ruled 
throughout civilization in regard to recognition of the rights of 
animals and their protection from cruelty. It may properly be 
called the Magna Charta of the animal world. 

This recognition of man's duty to the lower orders of creation 
was not accepted without a bitter fight. It antagonized the 
prevailing notions in regard to man's privilege to abuse his 
domestic animals, and it introduced a new idea into the scheme 
of civilization. It is true that great humanitarians in the past, 
even as early as the days of Plutarch, made strenuous appeals 
for kindly treatment for all harmless beasts. It remained, how- 
ever, for an Anglo-Saxon legislative body to put into concrete 
form these abstract propositions which had haunted the minds 
of the merciful and philanthropic for many ages. 

In 1824 the first society for the prevention of cruelty to 
animals was organized in London. This organization is still in 
existence and is known as the Royal Society for the Prevention 
of Cruelty to Animals. The anti-cruelty movement was first 
introduced into the United States through the efforts of Henry 
Bergh, who organized the American Society for the Prevention 
of Cruelty to Animals in New York city in 1866. Gradually 
the movement has spread all over the world and active societies 
for the protection of animals are to be found in almost every 
civilized land. Efficient societies are in operation in India, 

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PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 



151 



Japan, Finland, Egypt, South Africa, South America, and 
throughout Europe and North America. In the United States 
alone there are 427 societies devoted wholly or in part to the 
prevention of cruelty to animals. In addition to these there are 
44 societies devoted exclusively to the prevention of cruelty to 
children. Last year nearly one million six hundred thousand 
dollars were received for the support of anti-cruelty societies in 
this country and over twelve hundred paid employes were con- 
nected with the work. In addition there were over six thou- 
sand five hundred volunteer agents more or less active. Nearly 
a million and a half animals were reported as affected by this 
work in the United States during 191 1. 

The humane movement when first started undertook only to 
suppress cruelty to animals. Its scheme of activity was not 
nearly so complex then as now. At the present time many of 
the larger and wealthier societies are carrying on lines of work 
designed to afford other relief for animals and some societies 
are specializing, as for instance in the maintenance of animal 
shelters, homes of rest for horses and work-horse parades. 
Originally, humane literature was very limited in amount but 
now humane tracts are being distributed by hundreds of thou- 
sands, if not millions. The list of books inculcating humane 
principles has also become a long one and the titles alone fill 
pamphlets containing many pages. 

Years ago practical humanitarians began to feel that if their 
work was to prove permanently successful, children should be 
interested in it. Accordingly, "bands of mercy" were formed, 
first in England and later in the United States. Millions of 
children have now become members of these bands. They are 
doing an active work in behalf of humanity by reporting cases 
to societies managed by adults, which investigate the complaints 
and often prosecute offenders. Books of recitations and plays 
have been prepared for these children and they serve to increase 
interest and enthusiasm. Banners, humane badges and not in- 
frequently special rewards are offered to the children, with 
excellent results. 

Both in England and in the United States, some attention 
has been given to offering a series of rewards for humane essays 

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1 52 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

prepared by school children. In some cities in the United 
States large numbers take part and essays are presented in com- 
petition which show intelligent interest and considerable dis- 
crimination. The prizes are adapted to the different grades of 
school children so that all may be attracted to compete. In 
London the distribution of such essay prizes to school children 
draws many thousands of them to the yearly gathering, which 
is usually honored by the presence of members of the royal 
family. 

In the United States much attention has been given by socie- 
ties for the prevention of cruelty to animals to the introduction 
of humane education in the public schools. Already fifteen 
states have compulsory humane education laws, and I believe 
that Massachusetts should also be added to this list on account 
of laws passed some time ago encouraging humane instruction 
in educational institutions. Chicago has now been operating 
under a humane education law for about two years, and Mrs. 
Ella Flagg Young, superintendent of schools in Chicago, wrote 
to me recently that 

when the moral and humane education law was adopted by the legisla- 
ture of the state of Illinois, it was at first thought by the school people 
that the plan of teaching humaneness as a definite subject of instruction 
in the schools was a mistake. In the intervening two years, however, 
there has been a change of opinion, and I think that now most of the 
school people, at least in Chicago, recognize the advantage of the 
definite presentation of this subject as a part of the course of study. 

The Chicago board of education, on account of this state law, 
on March 23, 19 10, adopted a scheme for humane education 
and' moral training in the schools and presented an outline for 
such training accompanied by a list of books and periodicals 
that furnished material adapted to aid in such instruction. 
Humanitarians feel that to instruct a child in the principles of 
justice and kindness to the helpless or the weak does much to 
broaden the child's character and to increase its sympathy for 
that which is noble and good, and cannot fail to produce a better 
citizen for the future. It is a fixed principle of the policy of 
the anti-cruelty societies gradually to extend this system of 

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No. 4] PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 153 

education into the public schools of every state, and plans have 
been definitely formulated for systematically carrying this work 
forward. We believe it a means for the promotion of good 
citizenship not to be ignored by persons who feel that the heart 
should be educated as well as the mind, and that the funda- 
mental object of all education is the proper development of 
character. 

The laws which have been enacted for the protection of 
animals cover a large variety of offenses and are more or less 
known to the general public. There are laws which provide 
that proper food and drink must be supplied to them ; that dis- 
abled animals must not be abandoned or any animals carried in 
a cruel manner, whether in private vehicles or by common 
carriers ; that substances injurious to animals shall not be thrown 
in public places ; that cows shall not be kept in unhealthy places 
or fed improper food ; that animal fights for sport shall be for- 
bidden ; and there are a number of special provisions designed 
to protect beasts from heedless or intentional cruelty. 

The general policy of anti-cruelty legislation, however, has 
been not to legislate specially for every conceivable offense, but 
rather to provide general statutes designed to apply to most 
cases of abuse. As New York state was the first one to pass a 
special law for the protection of animals, its blanket statute has 
been largely copied in other states. Section 185 of the penal 
law of New York state is designed to cover all ordinary forms 
of cruelty and will serve as an example of the legal protection 
given to animals by a blanket statute. It reads in part as 
follows : 

A person who overdrives, overloads, tortures or cruelly beats or un- 
justifiably injures, maims, mutilates or kills any animal, whether wild or 
tame, and whether belonging to himself or to another, or deprives any 
animal of necessary sustenance, food or drink, or neglects or refuses 
to furnish it such sustenance or drink, or causes, procures or permits, 
any animal to be overdriven, overloaded, tortured, cruelly beaten, or 
unjustifiably injured, maimed, mutilated or killed, or to be deprived of 
necessary food or drink, or who wilfully sets on foot, instigates, en- 
gages in, or in any way furthers any act of cruelty to any animal, or 
any act tending to produce such cruelty, is guilty of a misdemeanor. 

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154 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

This law has been amply sustained in the courts and is an effi- 
cient instrument for the protection of animals from most forms 
of abuse. 

The New York state laws assist the enforcement of the 
section of the penal law just quoted, by providing two defi- 
nitions which greatly increase the effectiveness of the law. 
Thus Section 180 declares that " the word 'animal/ as used 
in this article, does not include the human race, but includes 
every other living creature." This same section also provides 
that "the word 'torture' or 'cruelty' includes every act, omis- 
sion, or neglect, whereby unjustifiable physical pain, suffering 
or death is caused or permitted." There are special laws for 
the protection of animals in railway transportation ; also others 
relating to agricultural conditions and the licensing of dogs, 
while the game laws and other laws affecting wild animals are 
discriminating and in the main reasonable and effective. 

There are two aspects of the anti-cruelty question which have 
received special consideration on the part of those who are 
deeply interested in its sociological value. The commercial or 
economic side of animal protection has been studied attentively 
and it has been calculated that the proper humane treatment of 
animals in the United States would result in savings amounting 
to hundreds of millions of dollars per annum. It is not possible 
to develop this aspect of the question in detail in a paper of 
limited length. The other general aspect of anti-cruelty work, 
to which I have just referred, deals with the reflex action on 
national character of the humanitarian movement. It was long 
ago felt that a greater moral harm was done to man himself, 
when guilty of cruelty to a beast, than was represented by the 
actual suffering of the creature. It was argued that man was 
degraded and debased by acts of cruelty and that the exercise 
of cruelty could not fail to have a powerful influence in a retro- 
grade way on his social development. 

Nero, the Roman Emperor, as a child, is said to have been 
diabolically cruel to animal life with which he came in contact. 
As the head of a great empire he only amplified and extended 
the cruelty which he had manifested as a youth. In a lesser 
but analogous way, we believe that this law of development 

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No. 4] PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 1 5 5 

applies to those countries where the humane treatment of 
animals is discouraged, for humanitarians feel that humane edu- 
cation and the enforcement of laws for the better protection of 
helpless beasts has an important bearing on national character 
and national instincts. 

The anti-cruelty societies are desirous of having public co- 
operation on the part of individuals and churches as far as 
possible, in carrying out the beneficent work in which they are 
engaged. Societies are desirous of establishing animal hos- 
pitals and free dispensaries in every large city, where intelligent 
and scientific care may be given to suffering animals, particu- 
larly those owned by the poor. Many a man of very limited 
means, who is dependent upon his horse for the support of 
himself and his family, does not feel that he can afford to pay 
the fee of a veterinarian for every slight ailment from which 
the animal may suffer. There is a large field for philanthropic 
work in the establishment and support, not alone of free dis- 
pensaries and animal hospitals, which are now beginning to 
spring up in the large cities, but also for the starting of courses 
of veterinary lectures so that all of those interested in horses, 
dogs, and others animals may obtain information how to care 
for them properly. 

In New York, Chicago, and Boston, excellent courses of free 
lectures on the proper care of animals have been given for 
several years. These courses of instruction are attended to a 
considerable extent by the police, by drivers and horse owners, 
and by officers of the anti-cruelty societies. They have a large 
field of usefulness, as they aid those coming in contact with 
animals to treat them humanely and intelligently in health as 
well as in illness or disability. 

Drinking fountains, from which animals may slake their 
thirst, especially during the heated term, are very desirable in 
all cities, and furnish an opportunity everywhere for those 
philanthropically inclined. Many humane societies lack veteri- 
nary ambulances, whereby injured or sick animals may be trans- 
ported. Proper appliances for raising horses which have fallen 
into excavations are usually needed in connection with these 
ambulances. Many humane societies have such conveniences, 

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1 56 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

but the majority have not. An active movement is under way 
in some sections of the country to promote " horse vacations." 
This is based upon the belief that a short rest during the sum- 
mer will increase the value of a horse's services during the rest 
of the year and prolong its life. It is based upon the supposi- 
tion that what is good for a man is good also for a beast, as 
both have bodies which are substantially alike in their general 
anatomical construction and physiological functions. This idea 
will probably become more popular in the future. 

Quite a number of societies have " homes of rest" for horses, 
where poor men may have their animals cared for, either 
gratuitously or at a nominal cost. We should advise persons 
interested in anti-cruelty work to offer farms, either by gift or 
loan, to humane societies so that they may be used for this 
purpose. Some enterprising anti-cruelty societies have under- 
taken to loan without charge horses which may be used by poor 
men who are dependent on their own animals for their living as 
an inducement for them to send their horses for a rest during 
the summer. 

One of the greatest needs of anti-cruelty societies for animals 
throughout the United States is an adequate endowment. 
Societies which depend wholly on annual subscriptions for their 
support are always more or less in debt if their work is a large 
and active one. The largest and most efficient societies in this 
country are dependent for the major part of their income upon 
the interest from endowments. I know of no way in which the 
humanely inclined can do a greater service than by making 
testamentary provision toward the support of local anti-cruelty 
societies, so that they may not be hampered in their beneficent 
work. Many anti-cruelty societies in the past have died from 
financial starvation. The majority of them are so situated that 
a few earnest, hard-working philanthropists who are looking 
after the protection of the animals have to spend at least half 
of their humane working time in securing funds with which to 
finance their societies. Humanity is a general social duty. It 
is not the prerogative of the few. If persons humanely inclined 
are performing a duty which should be undertaken by the many, 
it is only fair that they should be more generously financed by 

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No. 4] PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 1 5 7 

those who are able to extend help but whose work in this 
direction is being performed by others. 

The anti-cruelty cause has suffered much in the past from a 
lack of trained workers. Earnest and enthusiastic partizans of 
the cause have often volunteered their services, and while mean- 
ing well have not infrequently antagonized both the public and 
the magistrates by their well-intended but impracticable 
demands. Many times men have been employed to enforce 
humane laws for animals who had become superannuated as 
policemen or deputy sheriffs, and who were destitute of any 
real interest or personal fitness for the work. Others employed 
have been those who have failed elsewhere and whose employ- 
ment partakes very largely of the nature of a charity. Human- 
itarians are beginning to realize the error of such a policy as 
this and to feel that it is time that a special school should be 
started which shall fit the workers of anti-cruelty societies for 
their labors. 

Society has trained workers for nearly every other philan- 
thropic or business activity, as for instance, for social service, 
for nursing the sick, for every variety of technical employment, 
for bookkeeping and stenography, and so on through a long 
list. The humane worker is obliged to have a knowledge which 
is quite as technical and difficult as almost any of these. It is 
felt that a school is the only effective means of attracting young 
men and women of ability to enter this field of philanthropic 
endeavor and to perform efficient service. 

A paid agent of a society for the prevention of cruelty to 
animals should be familiar with the office management necessary 
for the successful carrying-on of an active society. He should 
be familiar with the needed office books and with the blanks 
required to receive complaints. He should know the proper 
methods of filing and should be drilled and disciplined in the 
carrying on of the more or less voluminous correspondence 
which is necessarily required. He should also be familiar with 
statistical methods, in order to present the results of the 
society's operations to its patrons. The humane worker should 
be taught how to keep up membership lists ; how to incorporate 
anti-cruelty societies and legally conduct the same ; how to keep 

(631) 



158 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

the minutes and records of the society and to prepare and pub- 
lish annual reports. 

In addition to all these things he must have the methods for 
field work well in hand. He must be more or less of a veteri- 
narian and must understand the anatomy and physiology of the 
horse and other animals. He must be fitted to tell others how 
to relieve suffering animals, and be able to determine with a 
reasonable degree of exactness whether the animal is actually 
suffering or not, and whether the case is one which should be 
taken into court. Humane workers need to be wise in regard 
to the law, for they must plead their own cases in most in- 
stances; they must know how to draw legal papers and be 
familiar with legal procedure and the intricacies of the law ; 
they must know what evidence is necessary in order to secure 
a conviction. It is desirable that an agent of a society for the 
prevention of cruelty to animals should understand how to take 
photographs well; how to adjust ill-fitting harnesses; how to 
distinguish between a dog which is merely suffering from a fit 
or lack of water and one which is really vicious and dangerous. 
There are many other qualifications which are required and 
which can be secured only by special training. 

Over and above all the humane agent must possess the milk 

of human kindness. He must be taught that the majority of 

offenders are cruel more because of ignorance than because of 

design, and that advice and friendly suggestion are what is 

needed in the vast majority of cases. Humane officers need to 

have enlightened good sense. They should be familiar with 

the latest and best methods of carrying on the work. It should 

be borne in mind, however, that all this theoretical knowledge 

is comparatively valueless unless supplemented by actual field 

work in connection with an active anti-cruelty society. It is 

desirable to have the theoretical foundation and the academic 

instruction for an officer, but in order to be properly fitted for 

his work he must go out on the street and into the police court, 

and learn actual methods by experience under the instruction 

of veteran workers. A school will be established in the near 

future through the efforts of the American Humane Association 

and we invite financial support for the development of this 

necessary work. 

(632) 



PRISON LABOR 



E. STAGG WHITIN 



General Secretary, National Committee on Prison Labor 

CHRISTIANITY has brought no greater change into the 
world than the overthrow of slavery. The greatest war 
of modern times had human slavery as its inciting cause, 
yet behind the dark bastilles we call our prisons, penitentiaries, 
reformatories, workhouses and refuges there still hides the 
enemy of our social progress, the economically vicious slave 
system. The abolition of the evils inherent in this system, 
comprising as they do the exploitation of the helpless, the 
perversion of state functions, the gnawing of graft and the cor- 
rupting of politics, appears no limited task, even to the most 
light-hearted of reformers ; to undertake to work out the recon- 
struction, the peaceful reformation of this system throughout 
the length and breadth of this land is at least to grapple with 
fundamental issues. 

Its dealings with the criminal mark, one may say, the zero point in 
the scale of treatment which society conceives to be the due of its 
various members. If we raise this point we raise the standard all along 
the scale. The pauper may justly expect something better than the 
criminal, the self-supporting poor man or woman than the pauper. 
Thus if it is the aim of good civilization to raise the general standard 
of life, this is a tendency which a savage criminal law will hinder and 
a humane one assist. 

Thus speaks Hobhouse. The level of the convict to-day is, 
economically considered, slavery. He is the property of the 
state and during his incarceration the economic value which is 
in him may be disposed of by the state to those who desire to 
lease it, or he may be worked by the state as it sees fit. 

The leased convict is always exploited. The state-worked 
convict may be made to work either to pay for his keep, to 
sustain his dependents, to reform his ways or to bring revenue 

(633) 



160 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

into the state treasury. Work he must and by the sweat of his 
brow he must learn that society has rights to be protected and 
he duties to perform. The conditions under which this training 
is given need not debase the state, his disciplinary authority, in 
the performance of its function. While we raise the level of 
the convict and force up the level of industrial society we must 
force up likewise the moral standard of the master who has 
charge of the discipline. Negro slavery was more demoralizing 
to the free man than to the slave ; convict slavery to-day demora- 
lizes the community and the free individual in just the same 
way. It is an old saying worthy to be believed of all men that 
a state cannot exist half slave and half free. 

The abolition of slavery in our prisons does not mean a jail 
delivery, nor does it mean even an indiscriminate pardoning by 
over-enthusiastic governors of large numbers of depraved and 
diseased men who are now incarcerated. From a slave the 
convict must become a ward and as a ward he must be disci- 
plined, corrected, developed, trained through daily chores, 
through honest work, with ever the hope of the brighter future 
before him when he can again assume the position of citizen 
and praise and bless the state that has trained him. Simple 
was the process of the abolition of slavery as pointed out by 
Lincoln when he said : 

Free labor has the inspiration of hope ; pure slavery has no hope ; the 
power of hope upon human exertion and happiness is wonderful ; the 
slave master himself has a conception of it, hence the system of tasks 
amongst slaves ; the slave whom you cannot drive with the lash to break 
seventy- five pounds of hemp in a day, if you task him to break a 
hundred and promise him wage for all over, will break you one hundred 
and fifty. You have substituted hope for the rod, and yet perhaps it 
does not occur to you that, to the extent of your gain in the case, you 
have given up the slave system and adopted the free system of labor. 

The movement which this thought represents is sweeping 
over the country, finding its expression in many states. It is 
championed by Wilson in New Jersey, Harmon in Ohio, Mann 
in Virginia, Hadley in Missouri, Johnson in California. The 
legislatures are responding, commissions are investigating, gov- 

(634) 



No. 4] PRISON LABOR 1 6 1 

ernors are conferring. As an outcome of the discussion at the 
governors' conference at Spring Lake the southern governors 
met in May in special conference upon it and the gover- 
nors in the West are soon to follow this example. But what is 
the actual status ? Whither are they leading ? To point the 
movement in a few brief phrases must suffice here. Economi- 
cally two systems of convict production and two systems of dis- 
tribution of convict-made goods exist: production is either by 
the state or under individual enterprise; distribution either is 
limited to the preferred state-use market or is made through 
the general market. In the light of such classification the con- 
vict-labor legislation of recent years shows definite tendencies 
toward the state's assumption of its responsibility for its own 
use of the prisoners on state lands, in state mines and as opera- 
tives in state factories ; while in distribution the competition of 
the open market, with its disastrous effect upon prices, tends to 
give place to the use of labor and commodities by the state it- 
self in its manifold activities. Improvements like these in the 
production and distribution of the products mitigate evils but 
in no vital way affect the economic injustice always inherent in 
a slave system. The payment of wage to the convict as a right 
growing out of his production of valuable commodities is the 
phase of this legislation which tends to destroy the state of 
slavery. Such legislation has made its appearance, together with 
the first suggestion of right of choice allowed to the convict in 
regard to his occupation. These statutes still waver in an 
uncertain manner between the conception of the wage as a 
privilege, common to England and Germany, and the wage as 
a right as it exists in France. The development of the idea of 
the right of wage, fused as it is with the movement toward gov- 
ernmental work and workshops, cannot fail to stand out sig- 
nificantly when viewed from the standpoint of the labor 
movement. 

In a word, the economic progress in prison labor shown in 
recent legislation is toward more efficient production by the 
elimination of the profits of the lessee ; more economical distri- 
bution of the products by the substitution of a preferred market, 
where the profits of the middleman are eliminated, in place of 

(635) 



1 62 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

the unfair competition with the products of free labor in the 
open market; and finally the curtailment of the slave system 
by the provision for wages and choice of occupation for the 
man in penal servitude. 

In administration the adaptation of these new principles pre- 
sents many difficulties and points the need of much careful 
study and detailed application suited to the special locality. 
Dr. Hart's illustration from the Columbus reformatory finds its 
counterpart in the horrors that have been perpetrated at the 
Columbus penitentiary. The pen portraits of Brand Whitlock 
in his Turn of the Balance exaggerate nothing in their depiction 
of the horrors of the convicts in the shops, suffering from in- 
dustrial diseases as horrible as the poisoning of which Dr. 
Seager has spoken, but forced to work under the brutal con- 
tractor till fatigue and anguish break them down — then the 
paddle and the water-cure change them from men into brutes. 
I should hesitate so to testify if the facts were not a matter of 
court record in a case now pending in that great city of Ohio 
whence came most of our inspiration at this morning's meeting. 
This is but a type, however. The convicts in Alabama who 
tried to become my slaves to avoid the mine-camp can be found 
if you care to seek them ; all along the line the war goes on 
between brutality and enlightened state control. What Dr. 
Hart told of in Ohio is as true in many other places. You 
have read of the abominable conditions in Maryland, the con- 
tracts in Connecticut which sell the right to grasping con- 
tractors to punish the convicts at their pleasure — but this phase 
must soon belong to the past. 

The National Committee on Prison Labor for two years has 
been investigating the conditions, advising with state officials, 
drafting legislation, organizing reform. Armed with a con- 
structive program resulting from its studies and experiments it 
will bring to the legislatures which are to be elected this year 
the encouragement which comes from well-conceived plans 
based upon actual conditions, and to the administrators whom 
the new governors shall appoint a synthesis of the available 
material upon which to work. It is not for support from these 
men that we need ask ; they will be glad and ready to respond — - 

(636) 



No. 4] PRISON LABOR 1 63 

it is from the public which this association represents, the public 
of the good citizen, the church-goer, the preacher, the tax-payer 
and the educator. Reform is impossible of permanence until 
these are fully alive to the problem and take personal interest 
in aiding each community to make that adjustment upon 
which permanent reform must rest. 

What are the conditions in your community ? What are 
you doing to improve them ? Do you realize that as a citizen 
of a state that continues the slavery of its convicts you join in 
the responsibility for its existence ? 

(637) 



THE EXTENSION OF ORGANIZED CHARITY IN THE 
UNITED STATES 

FRANCIS H. MCLEAN 

General Secretary, National Association of Societies for Organizing Charity 

IT is interesting to note that the movement which preceded 
all the other social movements of the present day in the 
United States was among the last to be nationally organ- 
ized. When the charity organization idea 1 was transplanted 
from England to the United States in the later seventies, the 
whole problem of family rehabilitation and of the attendant 
social campaigns which would have to grow out of the daily 
work of an organization attempting to rehabilitate, was consid- 
ered to be a strictly local or community problem. During the 
whole of the eighties the rudimentary ideas connected with the 
charity organization concept were more or less sprinkled out 
over all portions of the country. A number of the societies 
took deep root and grew up more or less sturdily, struggling 
along to a better and wider standard of work. In most cities, 
particularly the smaller ones, the roots were close to the surface 
and spread out laterally rather than horizontally; that is, the 
negative ideas of mere systematization of relief, the checking 
of duplication and fraud and similar ideas constituted the whole 
content of the program of these societies. This was to some 
extent true of the early nineties, but approximately from 1895 
to 1905 there was an increasing call made upon the recognized 
associated charities or charity organization societies from com- 
munities about to organize, asking for advice as to forms of or- 
ganization. This marked a distinct step in advance, because 
up to that time about the only things which had been borrowed 
from older societies were the forms of constitutions, which 

1 Charity organization societies, associated charities and societies for organizing 
charity are identical offshoots and these terms are used interchangeably throughout 
this article. 

(638) 



THE EXTENSION OF ORGANIZED CHARITY 



65 



closely resembled one another. The objects as generally stated 
included the development of cooperation, actual rehabilitation 
(employment being often specifically mentioned as one form 
of rehabilitation), as well as the carrying on of social and sani- 
tary reforms to improve the environmental conditions of the 
neglected. It is worth noting that the purposes of the great 
New York Charity Organization Society, with its manifold 
activities, read just the same as the constitution of dead-in-life 
societies which have been discovered by the writer in small 
cities in the interior. 

The recognized societies thus importuned to advise groups 
organizing in new communities at first confidently replied upon 
the basis of their own experience. Thus in each part of the 
country there was a set of societies resembling a model to be 
found in the nearest important society which had been con- 
sulted. Thus weakness and strength alike were perpetuated. 
Some new societies bodily seized ideas from some society which 
had developed a particular activity, possibly to the detriment 
of other more important activities. For instance, some soci- 
eties too strongly developed industrial agencies, others devel- 
oped other specialties. Committees writing to these particular 
agencies copied their specialties. 

During all these years there was growing up a recognition of 
the essential unity of the field. This could not fail to come 
into existence. There could be no barriers separating single 
municipalities or other units. The small city found its most 
difficult problem in this or that girl who had come in from the 
rural sections. The intermediate city found that its group of 
dependent families was recruited not only from the rural 
sections, but from the smaller cities which had not intelligently 
looked after their neglected families. The larger cities gathered 
their cases from all over the country. Thus slowly came the 
realization that this was not a mere community problem. This 
did not mean that each community should not be locally and 
independently responsible for the neglected families residing in 
it. It did mean, however, that the different communities were 
so inter-related that it was for the interest of all to have right 
principles of rehabilitation everywhere being actively employed. 

(639) 



1 66 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

So there came to the leaders in the movement the definite 
appreciation of the need of field work, similar to that done in 
other social activities. There was the need for the exchange 
of experience, and for guarding new movements against falla- 
cies and weaknesses, showing them how to start on right founda- 
tions at the beginning, thus conserving local resources in every- 
way. 

The field work was inaugurated as a Field Department of The 
Survey in 1907, being supported by the Russell Sage Founda- 
tion. In 1909 it was taken over by the Foundation directly 
and made a part of the work of the Charity Organization 
Department. In 191 1 it was taken over by the National 
Association of Societies for Organizing Charity. It is being 
conducted now, therefore, under the direction of some seventy 
of the recognized societies of the country for organizing charity, 
and is being supported by subscriptions received from the cities 
in which these societies are located. 

The purpose of this paper is not to consider this movement 
from the point of view of the societies, but rather from the 
point of view of those individuals or voluntary organizations, 
like churches, who are desirous of helping in the proper organ- 
ization of local societies. For those so interested it is sug- 
gested, first, that they write for certain pamphlets which are 
published by the Charity Organization Department of the 
Russell Sage Foundation for the benefit of the field work of the 
association. 1 The first of the pamphlets whose title is given in 
the footnote below presents concrete suggestions about the 
preliminary period of propaganda and organization before 
actual formation may be effected. The second is a small eight- 
page pamphlet explaining the purposes of organized charity in 
rudimentary form with illustrations, and is useful in interesting 
people to whom it is desirable to explain the movement. After 
carefully reading these pamphlets, correspondence with the 
office of the National Association of Societies for Organizing 
Charity is encouraged. Such correspondence should explain 

1 Write for single copies of The Formation of Charity Organization Societies in 
Smaller Cities and What is Organized Charity ? to the Charity Organization Depart- 
ment of the Russell Sage Foundation, 105 East 22d St., New York city. 

(640) 



No. 4] THE EXTENSION OF ORGANIZED CHARITY 167 

just who is interested in the proposed plan, what existing soci- 
eties may be more or less affected, from whom the proposition 
for organization has come, and as far as possible should give 
some characterization of the family problems which are coming 
to the existing organizations and of the public health and child 
problems which are most imminent. What will be emphasized 
by the national association's officers is that there is need of 
considering several elements in the community, and that until 
all these elements are interested, it is foolish to attempt an 
organization. To explain what is meant it may be well to say 
that the idea of organization may come from totally different 
sources. It may come from a group of churches who feel that 
there is duplication in relief and that this ought to be changed. 
This may be a public need, but no organization effected to deal 
solely with this will ever gain any large public support. Its 
work will be negative, and no negative enterprise will ever com- 
mand the sympathy of a community. The idea may develop 
in some commercial organization which, however, is looking at 
it from largely the same point of view. That is, the men are 
more or less bothered by applications of all kinds made per- 
sonally and otherwise. Or again, it may develop out of a group 
of broad-minded citizens who realize the need of a central re- 
habilitating society, bringing into proper coordination in con- 
nection with individual family problems all the social agencies 
of the city so that comprehensive plans for individual treatment 
may be worked out through the office and staff of the central 
society. Wherever it starts from there is the need of interest- 
ing the other two groups. This does not mean obtaining 
unanimity of opinion. Such organizations always have more 
or less opposition to deal with. It means, however, that the 
business men must be interested to such a degree that the board 
of directors created may be composed largely of business men. 
It means that of the agencies already dealing with the families 
in their homes, all, or at least some of the more important, 
should be willing to work upon the committees of such a society. 
It means that the interest of those who have social programs of 
other kinds to carry on should be enlisted to some degree. 
Another definite principle which must be accepted at the 

(641) 



1 68 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

very start, if failure is to be avoided, is that such a society 
must be led by a trained charity organization worker from 
another city. This is where many of the earlier societies failed 
completely. There was not sufficient backbone in the move- 
ment to accept the principle and live up to it. Therefore, per- 
sons without sufficient ability and training were accepted as 
general secretaries, and the societies failed completely. In- 
deed, the idea of service is the crux of the whole matter at the 
start. There can be no compromise on this point. There may 
be upon almost every other detail excepting this. The work 
is too important to the community's welfare to be left entirely 
to untrained hands. Furthermore, experience in the field 
work of the last five years has demonstrated that cities of 
10,000 or over are generally able to support a society with 
proper trained service. For cities under 10,000 other special 
plans may have to be tried. The national association is en- 
deavoring to carry on experimentation in these smaller cities 
with the hope of working out some general principles of action 
which, with adaptations, may be generally used. At the pres- 
ent time there is no publication dealing specifically with the 
problem of the city under 10,000. The association, however, 
welcomes correspondence regarding the problems of organiza- 
tion in these smaller cities. 

Another idea which is strongly emphasized in the pamphlet 
above mentioned is that temporary enthusiasm should not be 
confounded with grim determination. Societies which are 
started upon the spur of the moment, and as the result of one 
meeting, for instance, are liable to fall by the wayside. It is 
necessary that there be a great deal of talking and advising. 
The propaganda period should extend, therefore, from one 
month to one or two years, indeed up to the point where those 
interested feel certain that they have a group which is deter- 
mined to stand by the movement during its first two years of 
troublous existence. Not until there is this group, with this 
determination, is it time to consider definite organization. 

So far we have been reviewing some of the points which have 
developed out of the field experience. We have suggested 
above also that the national association will welcome corre- 

(642) 



No. 4] THE EXTENSION OF ORGANIZED CHARITY 169 

spondence from either a single individual or a group that has 
started on a campaign for organization. A great deal may be 
effected through such correspondence. The records of the 
national association show that in some instances organization 
has been effected without going beyond this correspondence 
stage, so far as the association is concerned. 

This brings us up to the real field work. For the informa- 
tion of local groups we would state that the kinds of visits made 
by the field secretaries of the association are two-fold in 
character. Visits of a day or two days are sometimes made, 
whenever they may be fitted into the road schedules, upon 
groups which are in the preliminary stages. Organization is 
not attempted at this time. There may be the suggestion of 
how best to steer the committee, there may be talks given be- 
fore representatives of societies or before commercial organiza- 
tions. Such visits make it possible for the field workers of the 
association to speak with more local knowledge than if the visit 
had not been made. These preliminary visits have increased 
in numbers during the last two years. They have been found 
quite effective. 

The second type of visit comes at a later period, generally 
just before the local group considers that the definite plunge 
into concrete organization should be made. These visits are 
generally of longer duration. If the demands upon the field 
force were not so overwhelming it is probable that no organiz- 
ing visit of less than a week would ever be proposed by us. 
Of course, no field secretary himself can relieve a local com- 
mittee of its responsibilities. He comes in simply to help in 
the proper rounding up. In doing so he often finds it neces- 
sary to press home the principles above indicated. These 
principles may have been accepted by the group primarily 
interested. This group may, however, have met with consider- 
able opposition in the community itself. By reason of the 
lack of concrete experience of its individual members, they 
have been perhaps somewhat handicapped in answering the ob- 
jections which have been raised by this or that individual or 
society. These objections are of two kinds. The first have to 
do with the form of organization itself, and the storm center is 

(643) 



1 70 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

often around the question of paid service. The second kind of 
objections are the most difficult to meet oftentimes. These 
objections acknowledge the reasonableness of the plan, but 
affirm that while other cities may have been able to carry on 
such a plan, this particular city is not able to undertake the 
burden. It is the duty of the field secretary to show what 
cities of the same size have done, and what their experiences 
have been. It is his duty to make such observations as will 
indicate that in the city concerned there are the same problems 
as are found in other cities which have already met the need 
by organizing. It is his duty constantly to give illustrations of 
family rehabilitation work in other cities, to show how other 
cities have financed their societies. It is his duty to uncover 
any fallacies or weaknesses in plans which have been evolved 
through the notions or ideas of people inside or outside of the 
groups primarily interested. It is his province, not to be a 
" spellbinder," but to meet with conferences of people whose 
interest in the movement is absolutely essential. It is his duty 
often to go even further and with members of the preliminary 
committee to visit individually this person and that. He must 
give advice as to the proper shaping up of final organization, 
as to what committees there should be, how they should be 
formed, what persons definitely should be asked to serve upon 
them. In a good many instances he may help in securing the 
consent of persons to serve upon the board of directors. He 
can do all this, of course, by himself, but cannot effect organi- 
zation. He must count upon the steering or preliminary com- 
mittee serving as the responsible agent and working steadily 
toward the final meeting for organizing purposes. In order to 
render the most effective service, therefore, visits of not less 
than a week should be made at this time. There are excep- 
tions to this, of course. The trouble is that the association 
has been obliged, by reason of the pressure of work, to limit 
many visits to briefer periods, simply to cover as much ground 
as possible. But on the whole the policy of the association 
has been distinctly against the idea of covering the ground at 
too great sacrifice of intensive work. 

There are all kinds of variations from the two types of visits 

(644) 



No. 4] THE EXTENSION OF ORGANIZED CHARITY 1 7 1 

above indicated. Thus there is the question of the reorganiza- 
tion of old societies, which have seen the light and desire to 
measure up to their community responsibilities. Each visit of 
reorganization is radically different from the one preceding it 
and the one following. There are also visits made to societies 
not needing reorganization, but seeking specific advice as to 
some particular activity which they may wish to inaugurate, or 
desiring to learn whether in some particular department of work 
they may not be strengthened. 

It may happen that some individual or organization is in a 
community where the society itself, though a dead-in-life one, 
does not realize its condition. This society or individual 
realizes the extent of the uncovered field and may wish to 
learn how effective reorganization may be brought about. It 
must be realized, of course, that the association must recognize 
a comity in its relation with such societies. Of course, many 
of these organizations are not really associated charities or 
charity organization societies. It may be of interest here to 
note that in addition to the some seventy societies which are 
members of the national association, there are only about sixty 
other societies whose standards are such that they are eligible 
for admission to it. Yet there are almost two hundred and 
fifty so-called associated charities which are listed in the 
directory of such societies. In the case we are considering 
there is an organization masquerading under the title. Nothing 
can be hoped for from violent action. It is generally a mistake 
simply to overlook the older organization and say we will start 
afresh. It is far preferable to secure its consent to have a field 
worker come in and in a perfectly friendly spirit make recom- 
mendations for reorganization. Sometimes, indeed, the pres- 
sure exerted by the other social agencies in the community 
may induce such an old organization to develop to its proper 
stature. In these different instances the national association is 
glad to correspond with those who feel the lack. It feels much 
easier and can help with greater effect whenever the coopera- 
tion of the old society is secured. But the welfare of the com- 
munity itself must be the most important consideration. 
Therefore, other methods of meeting the situation are some- 
times open and may be discussed with the association. 

(645) 



172 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

We have just spoken of the welfare of the community as the 
most important consideration. It may be permitted at this 
point to indicate just how we consider the charity organization 
society movement should function in the smaller cities of the 
country. Most people would concede that out of the great 
mass of people who have not been thinking socially the largest 
number of recruits to the whole social army will come through 
that particular social activity whose need in a rudimentary way 
will be recognized by practically all in a community. That 
need, of course, is the rehabilitation of dependent families. To 
the great mass of the uninstructed that will simply indicate 
material relief, but it is the natural starting point. With the 
proper family rehabilitation society you are educating one per- 
son after another of this uninstructed mass. Their ideas are 
very rudimentary. Many do not get beyond the rudimentary 
stage. But many others do travel along with the slowly unfold- 
ing idea of an efficient society. Therefore, the importance of 
a broadly founded society for cities of all sizes in the country 
cannot be overstated. It is most important where the social 
thinking of the whole nation, outside of those cities which are 
great centers of social thinking, depends upon the proper ex- 
tension of the family rehabilitation group. It matters not 
whether a particular charity organization society itself carries 
on the social reforms which are indicated by its family work, 
or educates the community up to the point of other societies 
undertaking them ; that must be decided by local conditions. 
But it does matter very much to any community whether there 
is in it this society which is day by day and week by week 
opening the eyes of the uninstructed to a sense of social re- 
sponsibility of varying kinds. And thus there is involved in its 
proper extension far more than a strengthening of the com- 
munity of action between the movement as one goes from city 
to city. Its proper extension is the best foundation for the 
local strengthening of all the other great national movements. 
Thus it has got far beyond the provincialism which marked its 
first twenty-five years of existence in this country. That pro- 
vincialism was a fortunate one in many ways. Each one of the 
societies had a hard fight against misunderstandings and toward 

(646) 



No. 4] THE EXTENSION OF ORGANIZED CHARITY i 73 

greater efficiency. Those that were weak fell by the wayside. 
Those that developed strongly could become a part of the 
national movement. It has been somewhat difficult to awaken 
many of the societies to a sense of the national responsibility. 
Nevertheless the interest and enthusiasm in what the societies 
regard as a great missionary movement is constantly upon the 
increase. They have not become confused by the multiplicity 
of other national movements in which their own leaders were 
more or less involved, but are more strongly convinced than 
ever that the very complexity of the social vision which they 
observe makes it even more vitally necessary that the family re- 
habilitation movement should be strongly pressed in every 
community of any size. For that movement is becoming a 
greater and greater national force towards socialization. 

(647) 



THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE FEDERAL COUNCIL 
OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN AMERICA 

CHARLES S. MACFARLAND 

Secretary of the Federal Council and of its Commission on the Church and Social 

Service 

THE Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America 
is composed of thirty-one evangelical denominations 
united, not upon the basis of a common faith and orden 
but under the principle of unity and diversity, uniting in one 
common service all forms of faith and order as represented in 
its constituency. The task of its commission on the church 
and social service is that of inspiring in the churches of the 
nation a deepening interest in the problems of the social order, 
and of bringing to bear the influence of the Christian church in 
the solution of our social problems. 

Two great interests come together in this work, that of church 
unity and that of social service. The various forms of social 
uplift which are before the church offer one of the most vital 
and permanent of reasons and opportunities for federating the 
churches. On the other hand the opportunities for social ser- 
vice are of such a nature that they can be fulfilled, in large 
measure, only by the churches acting together. Social service 
is thus in part the basis of the Federal Council, and the Federal 
Council offers the basis for social service. 

The task of the commission on the church and social service 
is indicated by the recommendations unanimously adopted by 
the Federal Council in Philadelphia in 1908, as contained in the 
report of the committee, published under the title The Church 
and Modern Industry, of which the following are typical 
utterances : 

The churches of Christ in this Federal Council accept without 
reserve and assert without apology the supreme authority of Jesus 
Christ. Christ's mission is not merely to reform society, but to save it. 
He is more than the world's readjuster. He is its Redeemer. 

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SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE CHURCHES 175 

The Church becomes worthless for its higher purpose when it deals 
with conditions and forgets character, relieves misery and ignores sin, 
pleads for justice and undervalues forgiveness. The Church stands 
forever for the two-world theory of life. The Church's doors open 
upon the common levels of life. They should never be closed. Its 
windows open toward the skies. Let their light not be darkened. The 
Church is not an end in itself. The services of the Church become 
subordinate to the Church's services to men. 

At no time have the disadvantages of the sectarian divisions of the 
Church been more apparent than when the call has come for a common 
policy or a united utterance concerning such problems as modern in- 
dustry now presents. This Federal Council may find some method 
for bringing the Protestant Christianity of America into relations of 
closer sympathy and more effective helpfulness with the toiling millions 
of our land. The Church does not stand for the present social order, 
but only for so much of it as accords with the principles laid down by 
Jesus Christ. The Federal Council places upon record its profound 
belief that the complex problems of modern industry can be interpreted 
and solved only by the teachings of the New Testament, and that Jesus 
Christ is the final authority in the social as in the individual life. The 
Church now confronts the most significant crisis and the greatest oppor- 
tunity of its long career. We recognize the complex nature of industrial 
obligations, affecting employer and employe, society and government, 
rich and poor, and most earnestly counsel tolerance, patience and mu- 
tual confidence ; we do not defend or excuse wrongdoing in high places 
or in low, nor purpose to adapt the ethical standards of the Gospel to 
the exigencies of commerce or the codes of a confused industrial 
system. 

We deem it the duty of all Christian people to concern themselves 
directly with certain practical industrial problems. To us it seems that 
the churches must stand for equal rights and complete justice for all 
men in all stations of life ; for the right of all men to the opportunity 
for self -maintenance, a right ever to be wisely and strongly safeguarded 
against encroachments of every kind ; for the right of workers to some 
protection against the hardships often resulting from the swift crises of 
industrial change ; for the principle of conciliation and arbitration in 
industrial dissensions ; for the protection of the worker from dangerous 
machinery, occupational disease, injuries and mortality; for the aboli- 
tion of child labor ; for such regulation of the conditions of toil for 
women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the commu- 
nity ; for the suppression of the sweating system ; for the gradual and 

(-49) 



iy6 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practicable 
point, and for that degree of leisure for all which is a condition of the 
highest human life ; for a release from employment one day in seven ; 
for a living wage as a minimum in every industry, and for the highest 
wage that each industry can afford ; for the most equitable division of 
the products of industry that can ultimately be devised ; for suitable 
provision for the old age of the workers and for those incapacitated 
by injury ; for the abatement of poverty. 

While this social or industrial creed of the churches relates 
mainly to the problems of industry, it is thus far a significant 
indication of the attitude to which the Christian church is 
coming, with relation to all the questions of the social order. 
In the carrying out of these principles a national office of the 
commission, in association with the Federal Council, has become 
a center for information, inspiration and guidance in the social 
work of the churches. 

Through interdenominational action, the commission will 
bring about coordination and cooperation among the denomina- 
tions composing the Federal Council, including, so far as may 
be possible, the adoption of a common program, the use of 
common literature and the presentation of the united appeal of 
the gospel in its application to social problems and opportunities. 
Through this interdenominational cooperation will come the 
development of this aspect of the work of the churches, the 
education of the ministry and the churches for it, and the 
equipment of the churches for carrying it forward. 

One of the most important matters in relation to the whole 
problem is that of the preparation of the ministers to meet these 
great tasks. Representing the churches of the Federal Council, 
the commission will cooperate with the theological seminaries, 
so far as it is invited and permitted, in the formulation of a 
policy with regard to instruction and practical training in this 
important subject. 

While on the one hand our ministers have not been altogether 
prepared in the theological seminaries for this work, it is perhaps 
equally true that our social workers have gone out without 
adequate training as to their relations with the Christian church. 

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No. 4] SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE CHURCHES \ yj 

Therefore the same cooperation should obtain with the various 
schools for the preparation of social workers, that they, upon 
their side, may also come into a proper working relation with 
the Christian churches. 

The instruction in social sciences and ethics in our colleges 
and universities, imparted to young men and women who will be 
leaders of the church life of the nation, will be the subject of 
investigation and mutual consideration, through conferences and 
inquiry. 

The relation of the churches to the multitude of agencies for 
social reform and betterment is an important problem before 
the commission. Its influence, together with that of the de- 
nominations and churches which it represents, will be brought 
to cooperate, so far as possible, with such societies and move- 
ments, in relation especially to those measures which affect the 
moral and spiritual welfare of the people. This will include 
such matters as child and woman labor, occupational disease, 
Sunday labor, seven-day labor, the reduction of hours, the 
betterment of wages, health, housing conditions, vice and crime, 
and many other similar questions, including both social wrong 
and social wrongs, social righteousness and social rights. The 
relations between local charity organizations, social settlements 
and similar local work will be taken up and considered, by con- 
ference and inquiry, from the viewpoint of the churches. 

Few people have realized the extent to which our home 
mission work involves social problems and includes the work of 
social organization. Indeed, the churches in home mission 
fields are often, if not generally, the initiators of the social and 
community institutions. This work will be studied, encouraged 
and developed. This commission and the home mission com- 
mittee will work in cooperation to that end. In the foreign 
mission field also, this branch of Christian service has in some 
cases developed more fully than in our own land, especially in 
industrial, medical and educational work, which has lifted for- 
eign nations to a higher social level. This work will be made 
the subject of careful research and continued development, by 
a working relation between the commission and the committee 
on foreign missions. 

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178 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

By the constant issuing of literature in leaflets and handbooks 
for serious study, and the use of the religious, daily and weekly 
press, the growing accumulation of material relating to social up- 
lift and social causes will be put into shape so as to be used by 
the churches for education and incitement to service. Authors 
are now being found for a series of handbooks of a popular 
nature, to be placed in the hands of pastors for use in church 
classes. 

The labor and trade journals are receiving bulletins informing 
industrial workers and managers of the deepening interest of 
the church in their common problems and duty. 

Lists of speakers, lecturers and instructors are being pre- 
pared, and a lantern-slide bureau is being established and de- 
veloped. The commission will confer with labor representatives 
and will send its delegates to their gatherings. Similarly it will 
confer with groups of business men and send delegates to their 
gatherings. It will confer in joint meetings of both of these 
groups in modern industry and issue its challenge to both of 
them to unite with the church in a common service. The 
secretary of the commission is a fraternal delegate to the 
American Federation of Labor. 

Investigations will be made in various large and important 
industries, similar to the investigation of the steel industry by a 
special committee of the commission in 1910. Similar investi- 
gations in local communities will be made through pastors and 
other local agents. A report of such an investigation by a 
committee which spent several days on the ground has just 
been issued concerning the industrial situation at Muscatine, 
Iowa. 

A nation-wide campaign is being carried on, endeavoring to 
cover all the states of the union, to secure one day's rest in 
seven for industrial workers. Committees in the various states 
are now being organized and the various forces brought to- 
gether to this end. 

The commission will continue to encourage the observance 
of Labor Sunday in the pulpits and by the churches of the 
nation. Last year thousands of pulpits carried out a program 
prepared by the commission, in many cases union services 

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No. 4] SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE CHURCHES 1 79 

being held, at which a large number of the churches of the 
cities came together. 

More recent activities of the commission have been in relation 
to the Men and Religion Forward Movement. It now has the 
task of assisting in the conservation of the social-service work 
that has been begun in the various cities through the agency of 
this great movement. For this work a comprehensive program 
has been sent out to all the cities of the nation. A conference 
on this subject will be held at Silver Bay in June. 

Under the combined auspices of the Commission and other 
agencies in the Federal Council a beginning has been made 
toward coordinating the churches and religious agencies which 
offer leadership in the work of rural betterment. An endeavor 
will be made to provide bibliographies for the aid of rural 
helpers, instruction as to social surveys by local churches, pro- 
grams for community service for country and rural churches, 
and a bureau for public service, relating to all rural studies, 
methods and problems. In addition to these efforts, the com- 
mission will stand ready to take up any special social task that 
may fall to its lot. 

The work of this commission must be done mainly through 
the various denominational agencies, and for this purpose a 
cabinet has been formed of the secretaries or other representa- 
tives of the various denominational commissions on social 
service. 

The literature of the commission is assuming large propor- 
tions, and in addition to this the various denominational com- 
missions are already providing the churches under their re- 
spective care with definite, concrete programs for the social 
work of churches or parishes. 

At a conference held in Chicago in November 191 1 repre- 
sentatives of seventeen denominations adopted this general 
program of the Federal Council commission and voted to enter 
into a working relation to carry it out. It looks as though in 
this great task which is before the church at the present 
moment she would move as one body ; and it may be said that 
there has been no more potent agency in bringing about Chris- 
tian unity than this task of social service. 

(653) 



CITY-PLANNING IN NEW YORK CITY— HOW ALL CAN 

COOPERATE 

GEORGE B. FORD 
Lecturer on City-Planning, Columbia University; City- Planning Expert, Newark, N. J. 

CITY-PLANNING as a science is of recent origin, but city- 
planning, such as it was, began with the first streets and 
the first docks laid out by the original Dutch settlers in 
New York. For the first two centuries of its existence the plan 
of New York developed in a haphazard manner ; it followed the 
demands of immediate convenience, It was not until 1807, 
when a few optimistic men laid out a street plan for all the rest 
of Manhattan Island, that any thought was taken for the future 
of the city. The great mass of the public thought the men who 
designed this plan absolutely crazy in imagining that New York 
would ever grow to such a size ; however, this plan has been 
followed above Fourth street and it is substantially our present 
gridiron scheme. As water transportation was of primary im- 
portance in those days, and as no one foresaw the changes 
which would be brought about by the application of steam and 
electricity to transportation, the whole street layout was based 
on the idea of the maximum amount of intercourse between the 
two waterfronts and a minimum amount of movement the 
length of the island. In the light of our present knowledge 
this arrangement should have been exactly reversed, and the 
long city blocks should have run north and south instead of east 
and west. 

A few squares and small parks were sprinkled over this plan, 
but no large park was provided for until Central Park was set 
apart and laid out in 1858; then followed Prospect Park and 
much later the Bronx parks. Morningside Park, the Speedway, 
Riverside Drive with its extensions, Forest Park and other 
smaller ones followed in due time ; while latterly we have the 
new Coney Island and Rockaway reservations. These parks 
have been the greatest boon to New York city ; they have been 

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CITY-PLANNING IN NEW YORK CITY 181 

aptly described as the "lungs" of the city. They have had a 
marked effect on its healthfulness and enjoyableness ; they have 
been of particular benefit to the children. Furthermore, they 
are among the most beautiful parks in the country. 

New York has done much, too, in the way of playgrounds. 
The playground movement, to be sure, has been of compar- 
atively recent origin, the principal development being within 
the last ten years ; and while there are a number of well- 
equipped and well-managed playgrounds in the crowded portions 
of the city, they are quite inadequate in size or number for the 
needs of the community. The difficulty is that land costs so 
much now in congested districts that anything like an adequate 
acquisition of space for public playgrounds becomes impossible. 
The recreation piers have done something to solve the difficulty, 
but it remains so to plan the outlying districts that the mistakes 
of the past may be avoided in the future. 

New systems of streets are being laid out all the time ; not 
only is the whole street layout of 1807 solidly built up, but the 
same congestion extends into large areas of Brooklyn and the 
Bronx, and is even beginning to extend into Queens and Rich- 
mond. Each of the five boroughs has its own topographical 
department or bureau of surveys, which is constantly laying out 
new streets. Over all the bureaus is the engineering depart- 
ment of the board of estimate and apportionment, which is try- 
ing valiantly to unify the whole street development of the city. 
Owing to the powerlessness of the city to control private sub- 
divisions, it is most difficult to work out an ideal general plan 
for the five boroughs. Attempts are being made to study this 
problem in a scientific way, particularly in the Borough of 
Manhattan, but this work receives very little support from the 
public, on account of a lack of understanding of its great 
advantages. 

The transit problem is at present much before the public. 
We already have in our street cars, elevated railroads and sub- 
ways an interesting and earnest attempt to solve this problem ; 
the new routes now being laid out will do a great deal more 
toward rounding out the transit system of New York. A great 
deal remains to be done, however, and this can be done only 

(655) 



1 82 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

when the general public awakes to a realization of the impor- 
tance of the subject. 

In its dock development New York is very fortunate. In 
Manhattan, in particular, the city owns nearly ninety per cent of 
the waterfront, and can thereby control its future development. 
It is greatly to be regretted that it does not have a similar con- 
trol over the waterfront in the other boroughs. It has in the 
privately owned Bush Terminal in Brooklyn the best example in 
America of a scientifically developed port scheme. The effi- 
cient and economical relation here between the piers, the sheds, 
the factories and the dwellings with their intercommunicating 
railways and sidings are most worthy of careful study. The 
present dock commissioner, Honorable Calvin Tomkins, has 
presented many good schemes for the scientific use and devel- 
opment of the city's waterfront. No unsupported public offi- 
cial, however, can carry through such plans. 

The railways are continually making progress in the solution 
of the problem of the transportation of goods into and out of 
the city and between different parts of the city, but they are 
greatly hampered by lack of understanding and cooperation on 
the part of the general public and thereby of the city. There 
is an enormous amount of time, energy and money wasted in 
New York by lack of adequate and scientifically placed and 
planned freight terminals and connections. The problems of 
what to do with the lower west side of Manhattan and how to 
take care of the new industrial development in the Bronx are 
problems of vital importance affecting the whole question of the 
high cost of living, yet little is done to help bring about a 
solution. 

In the transportation of people in and out of the city by the 
railways we have another great and important problem, one on 
which an enormous amount of money has recently been spent 
by roads like the New York Central and the Pennsylvania ; yet 
in the latter case in particular the city has done practically noth- 
ing to cooperate. Again, public understanding and cooperation 
are of the greatest importance. 

In housing there has grown up in New York city a set of 
conditions practically unique ; the five and six-story tenement 

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No. 4] CITY-PLANNING IN NEW YORK CITY 183 

covering seventy per cent of a lot one hundred feet deep is 
almost exclusively a New York problem. Many attempts have 
been made to solve this, most important of which was the work 
of the tenement-house committee, resulting in the tenement- 
house law adopted about ten years ago. This law, while far 
from ideal, was a splendid achievement under the conditions 
then existing and it has vastly bettered conditions. On the 
island of Manhattan, further improvement of housing conditions 
is extremely difficult ; already there are large sections of the 
Bronx and Brooklyn to which the same statement applies ; 
attention should be concentrated on the areas as yet uncon- 
gested. A popular appreciation of the evils of congestion is of 
the greatest importance. Once the matter is understood it will 
be much easier to bring the public to cooperate in demanding 
a solution of the housing problem by scattering the dwellings 
of the people over a larger area with a correspondingly de- 
creased density per acre. Obviously people must live within 
easy walking distance of their work or else the means of transit 
between the places where they work and those where they live 
must be quick, cheap, safe and comfortable. As transit is fast 
reaching its efficient limit, it remains to concentrate on bringing 
the work out to the people ; this means offering inducements in 
the way of good waterfront and freight-handling facilities in the 
outlying districts. A general provision of such facilities can be 
secured only by an intelligent and general popular demand. 

Together with this problem of housing comes that of markets, 
schools, libraries, gymnasiums and baths. Popular interest and 
demand has brought about a wise and fairly adequate disposition 
of schools and libraries ; the public has not yet awakened to 
the corresponding necessity for a proper distribution of markets, 
baths, and gymnasiums. A limited number of baths and 
gymnasiums exist in Manhattan ; the other boroughs are suffer- 
ing badly from the lack of them ; only in the Bronx has the 
question of markets been agitated to any extent. 

Civic centers as formally designed groups do not exist in 
New York. Within the last few years, however, the question of 
civic centers has been strongly agitated. This has resulted, in 
Manhattan, in the acceptance of a scheme for a civic center 

(657) 



1 84 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

about the present city hall. With a view to unifying the 
scheme, however, the location of the new municipal building is 
most unfortunate. An attempt to unify the present Brooklyn 
system about the Borough Hall is also a distinct step in 
advance ; as is also the recent suggestion for a civic group in 
connection with the present Borough Hall in Richmond. In 
Columbia University, with its surrounding educational buildings, 
we have a real educational center. Aside from these groups, 
however, the gain in efficiency and beauty wherever civic build- 
ings are grouped can be seen from many examples both in this 
country and abroad. It is desirable that the public should be- 
come acquainted with these facts so that they can demand 
results along these lines. 

In the various features of water supply, sewage disposal, 
garbage and refuse collecting, and street cleaning, New York 
compares well with other cities, but except in the matter of 
water supply it has many possibilities of improvement. The 
public in general is indifferent. While this indifference remains, 
improvement is not likely to progress much more rapidly than 
it now does ; and yet new problems are arising due to the very 
vastness of the undertakings in New York which imperatively 
demand radical changes, particularly in sewage disposal. 

In the details of the architectural and landscape settings of 
the streets, parks, and open places, the city is making good 
progress, particularly in its street lighting and street signposts ; 
but in the use of street trees, in the decorative handling of 
street signs, and in the use of other such accessories as letter 
boxes, hydrants, statues, public comfort stations, subway 
entrances, elevated structures and water-troughs there is much 
room for improvement. Here again popular demand is needed. 
In its bridges and approaches the city has been reasonably 
fortunate. The existence of the Municipal Art Commission 
has helped materially toward getting good results in all these 
public structures, but owing to lack of popular support the work 
of the commission has been far more difficult than it should be. 

In methods of taxation and assessment with a view to carry- 
ing out public improvements New York city compares favorably 
with other communities both here and abroad. It is noteworthy 

(658) 



No. 4] CITY-PLANNING IN NEW YORK CITY 185 

in this connection that a committee of the board of estimate and 
apportionment is considering the question of new sources of 
revenue for the city. The separating of assessments on land 
and on improvements, the annual or biennial re-assessment of 
property and the assessment of a betterment tax on the im- 
mediate abutters on new improvements are changes of great value 
to the city. The methods of taxation and the restrictions on 
the use of land in other cities, however, should be seriously 
considered here : such are the unearned-increment tax, excess- 
condemnation laws, zoning, districting, regulating the height 
and character of buildings. 

Interest in city planning in general in New York has been 
of slow growth, particularly as compared with other cities of the 
country. The Pendleton commission appointed by the Mayor 
about ten years ago handed in an elaborate report dealing 
principally with the creation of new diagonal avenues in Man- 
hattan and Brooklyn, the improvement of the bridge approaches, 
the designing of civic centers and the extension of the park 
system. Considering the state of the science of city-planning 
at that time, their reports compared very favorably with those 
of other cities. Very few of their suggestions have been 
carried into effect, however, because few of them were based on 
a scientific analysis of prevailing conditions. In other words, 
the modern business man, with his common-sense ideas of 
efficiency, found these plans to be impractical. 

More recently, the Fifth Avenue Association in Manhattan 
and the Brooklyn city-planning committee have been conduct- 
ing an active campaign toward civic improvement, particularly 
along the line of the " City Beautiful." 

The Municipal Art Commission, founded and backed by the 
Municipal Art Society, has had a marked effect upon the 
standards of civic architecture. The Mayor's Congestion Com- 
mission of 1910 and 191 1, for whose establishment the New 
York Congestion Committee may claim credit, has accomplished 
a great work in giving publicity to the economic and social evils 
occasioned by overcrowding in New York City ; it has done 
much toward arousing the general public and the city officials 
to a feeling of social responsibility, particularly in civic matters. 

(659) 



1 86 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

As a result of all these movements there has been a growing 
demand of late for a city-planning commission for the whole of 
New York city, similar in functions and powers to those existing 
in other cities. Opposition on the part of the various borough 
presidents who have been afraid that the creation of such a 
commission would deprive them of some of their jealously 
guarded prerogatives has prevented this matter from coming 
to a head. 

There is a vital need of such a commission ; the problems 
which confront New York city are becoming more and more 
involved every day; each of the city departments is going 
ahead and trying to solve its individual problems as best it 
knows how. Even where a favorable disposition exists, it is 
extremely difficult for any one department to cooperate with 
the others ; very few of the department heads have the time, 
money, or breadth of vision to attempt to solve their problems 
in relation to the needs of the city as a whole. The suggestions 
that are being propounded now by the dock department, ad- 
mirable as they are in themselves, may be distinctly detrimental 
to the best interests of the city as a whole, in running counter 
to its needs from the standpoints of housing, recreation, transit 
or manufacturing. Plans now being proposed for transit im- 
provement may run counter to the best interests of the city in 
its commercial, manufacturing and housing development. It is 
imperative to-day that a commission be appointed to correlate 
and unify all these different phases of the city's development. 
Such a commission should consist of men representing all that 
is best in breadth of vision, variety of point of view and practical 
common sense — men in whom the public can have confidence. 

Such a commission will be secured in only one way, and that 
is by educating the public to the needs of city-planning in its 
broadest sense, and thus creating an irresistible demand for 
action. This education will come about only by the coopera- 
tion of all the civic, social, esthetic, legal, political and religious 
bodies of the city. It means that in all such associations, 
societies, clubs or other groups, active committees should be 
formed to work continuously, in season and out, to spread the 
propaganda of city planning. This can be done by circularizing, 

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No. 4] CITY-PLANNING IN NEW YORK CITY i 87 

lectures, exhibitions, and personal work. Each body may 
emphasize that phase of the general subject which more par- 
ticularly affects its interests, but in every case the relation of 
this particular phase to all the other aspects of the subject 
should be kept constantly in mind. 

City-planning as a subject is becoming of greater importance 
every year. Within a comparatively short time, it is going to 
be one of the most important questions before the public. It 
affects all sides of life. It affects vitally every man, woman 
and child. It is the part of far-sighted wisdom to take up the 
subject of city-planning with promptness and zeal. 

(661) 



HOUSING NEEDS 1 

LAWRENCE VEILLER 
Director, New York Tenement House Committee 

NEW YORK has devoted more effort to housing reform 
than any other city in America; notwithstanding this, 
its needs to-day are greater than those of any other 
American city. That is due to the magnitude of the problem ; 
for New York has over 100,000 separate tenement houses, 
whereas in most American cities the tenement house is the 
exception rather than the rule. The outlook in the city is dis- 
tinctly encouraging. The present-day tenement house, built 
under the existing law, is the best type of structure in the city 
of New York. In fact it is the only kind of building except 
theaters which has the safeguards that we have been taught to 
believe essential for the preservation of life, health and morality. 
The one-family house has not these safeguards, nor has the 
two-family house. The Asch building fire called attention forci- 
bly to the fact that lofts, factories and office buildings lack these 
safeguards. The tenement house as built to-day comes nearest 
of any building to being properly protected, but it is still very 
inadequate in many particulars. 

From the ideal point of view New York's greatest housing 
need is a thorough revision of the tenement-house law. That 
is a difficult thing to bring about. It would be advantageous if 
we could materially increase the minimum width of courts, not 
the inner court, 24 feet wide, but the narrower one, only six 
feet and six inches. Similarly, it is highly desirable to increase 
the size of the back yard to allow more light at the rear of the 
building ; but it is practically impossible to do it by law. Un- 
less we wait until the time is ripe, changes in the law are likely 
to mean not progress, but retrogression. The legislative game 
is a dangerous one. 

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 19 12. 

(662) 



HOUSING NEEDS 1 89 

The next need is the regulation of houses other than tene- 
ments. A dark inner bedroom in a two-family house is just as 
dangerous from the point of view of tuberculosis as one in a 
three or four-family house. The two-family houses which are 
building in the outskirts of our city are practically unregulated. 
They may have no yards, no windows, no toilet facilities and no 
running water ; rooms may be as small as the builder wishes to 
make them, and absolutely dark ; of all the safeguards thrown 
around the tenement dweller, none is provided in the two or 
one-family house. In many of our progressive western cities, 
on the other hand, the housing laws apply to the one and two- 
family houses, and the same requirement should be made in 
Greater New York. The great field of building operations of 
residence building is in Queens and in the Bronx. This is often 
forgotten by residents of Manhattan ; actually more theaters than 
private residences were built in the borough of Manhattan last 
year. The far-sighted student, however, will look to the future 
of the outlying boroughs. 

Much can be done in improving the enforcement of the ten- 
ement house law, by cooperation with the tenement-house 
department, which is doing admirable work. It is important to 
find out the facts and get at the view of the public official, to 
see the limitations under which he is working, and give him due 
credit for the good work he has done as well as to hold him 
responsible for poor work. 

Another housing need is the education of tenants. The 
great mass of tenement-house dwellers in New York city need 
to be taught how to live. A large part of the housing evils in 
American cities are due to the people themselves, to their 
ignorance, their lack of leisure time and their undue hours of 
labor. These all make it easy to fall into bad habits of living. 
Similarly the landlords and builders ought to be educated. 
That is a much more difficult task than the education of tenants, 
and yet it is not a hopeless one. The height of buildings ought 
to be regulated, and especially the erection of high buildings 
ought to be checked in the outlying districts of the city. There 
are large stretches in Queens and Richmond and the Bronx, 
nothing more than farm land, amid which five and six-story 

(663) 



90 



ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 



tenement houses are going up. That should be restricted by 
law. It is serious not only for tenants in the outlying districts, 
but even for the business sections of the city. People in gen- 
eral are beginning to realize that unregulated building is not a 
wise thing for them, for their investment or for the community. 

New York is doing little about city-planning. Many of the 
housing evils in this city have been due to the lot ioo feet deep, 
no matter what its width. Yet we are cutting up farm land and 
acreage to-day and making it into lots 20 feet by 120 and 100 
feet. That is happening all over America, and it is preparing 
trouble for future generations. It could all be obviated by a 
wise study of the possibilities of the small lot of shallow depth, 
and sometimes of narrow width. 

As to room overcrowding, no city in America has ever done 
anything. Some persons believe that it affects this community 
more than any other evil, but we have no data to warrant any 
definite conclusion. 

Notwithstanding all these needs New York is strongly to be 
commended for having done so much. She has done more in 
the last ten years in the cause of housing reform than any other 
city in the world has done in the same length of time, and more 
than any other American city is doing to-day. 

(664) 



THE PROTECTION OF FACTORY WORKERS 1 

GEORGE M. PRICE, M. D. 
State Factory Investigating Commission 

THE interpretation of the term " protection of factory 
workers " has undergone great changes since first the 
need of such protection became evident. It is in- 
teresting to trace the various stages in the evolution of this 
idea from its birth until the present time. 

The first theoretical impulse was given by the epoch-making 
treatise of Rammazzini On the Diseases of the Artizans, pub- 
lished at the end of the seventeenth century and translated into 
English in 1705. In this book we first find a description of 
various diseases of occupations and a statement of the need for 
the protection of the worker from these diseases. Forty years 
later appeared the work of Dr. Pringle On the Diseases of the 
Army, followed in 1753 by Dr. Lind's On the Means of Pre- 
serving the Health of the Seamen and by Dr. Blane's Observa- 
tions on the Diseases of the Seamen, published in 1785. 

Almost simultaneously with the birth of the modern factory 
system in the latter part of the eighteenth century came philan- 
thropic efforts to protect workers from the abuses of this 
system. The agitations of Hanway, Dr. Percival, Dr. Ferriar, 
and a host of others, — the forefathers of the present child-labor 
committees, so to speak, bore fruit in the enactment in 1802 of 
the first factory act protecting the health of children working 
in cotton factories. The history of the progress of labor legis- 
lation and of enactments for the protection of factory workers 
since 1802 is replete with interest, but cannot be discussed 
here. Beginning with the protection of pauper child-appren- 
tices in cotton factories, protection has gradually been ex- 
tended until it now comprehends various conditions of the life 
and labor of the whole working class. 

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 1912. 

(665) 



1 92 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

It is interesting to analyze the protection of factory workers 
as it is found at present in civilized countries. The measures 
fall broadly into five classes which may be sub-divided as 
follows : 

1. The Worker 

(a) Age. 

Limitation, restriction and prohibition of child work. 

(b) Sex. 

Limitation, restriction and prohibition of woman's 
work. 

(c) Industrial education. 

(d) Vocational guidance. 

2. Working Conditions 

(a) Wages. 

(b) Hours of labor. 

(c) Conditions of labor. 

3. The Workshop 

(a) Construction. 

(b) Fire protection. 

(c) Light and illumination. 

(d) Ventilation. 

(e) Sanitary care. 

(f) Sanitary comforts. 

4. Dangers of Occupation 

(a) Safeguarding of machinery. 

(b) Dusty trades. 

(c) Industrial poisons, gases and fumes. 

(d) Infectious materials and extra-hazardous labor. 

5. Social Protection 

(a) Right of labor organization. 

(b) Housing of the working classes. 

(c) Prevention of accident ; accident insurance. 

(d) Prevention of unemployment; unemployment in- 

surance. 

(e) Prevention of sickness; sickness insurance. 

(f) Prevention of excessive industrial mortality; industrial 
mortality insurance. 

(666) 



No. 4] PROTECTION OF FACTORY WORKERS 193 

The agencies for the protection of factory workers are many 
and various. These agencies rarely take in the whole range of 
the work, but limit themselves to one or more of the divisions 
of labor protection enumerated above. These several agencies 
can be classified as follows : 

(1) Philanthropic organizations. 

(2) Employers. 

(3) Labor organizations. 

(4) The state. 

(5) The industry. 

( 1 ) The number of philanthropic organizations started from 
time to time with the purpose of agitating for the protection of 
factory workers is large. As already mentioned, the rise of the 
humanitarian spirit dates far back to the end of the seventeenth 
century. As a rule the specific phases of protection which 
philanthropic bodies take up are child labor and woman's work. 

(2) As far as the protection of workers by employers 
themselves is concerned, since the time of Robert Owen there 
have been a large number of enlightened and liberal employers 
who have endeavored to introduce better conditions into their 
industrial establishments and to ameliorate the condition of the 
workers in their employ. In most cases this protection has 
been in the form of improved sanitary conditions of factories, 
and in certain limitations of hours of labor. 

(3) The protection of factory workers by labor organizations 
has been mostly in the increase of wages and in the lessening of 
the hours of labor. 

(4) The protection which factory workers receive from the 
state is usually a result, on the one hand, of the agitation of 
philanthropic bodies, and on the other hand, of the increasing 
demands of labor organizations, which are often endorsed by 
enlightened employers. 

The forms of protection by the state are many and embody 
practically all the measures enumerated above. Much pressure 
must be brought upon legislative bodies and much agitation 
must be carried on before the state exerts its powers. The 
protection of factory workers depends naturally upon the defi- 
niteness and lucidity of the laws, and upon the creation of 
proper and intelligent organizations for enforcing them. 

(667) 



194 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

(5) The protection of the workers by the industry seems to 
be an ideal method, but is practical only when the components 
of the industry — the employers, the employes and the con- 
suming public — are educated to a point where their interests 
may be mutually combined and protected by one another. 
This is really an intelligent cooperation of the three principal 
partners in an industry, and would afford the best protection for 
the employes and the industry, especially if such protection 
were conducted with the cooperation of the state. 

I wish in no wise to belittle the efforts and the work of any 
institutions or organizations for the protection of factory workers, 
but it seems to me that the time has arrived when such pro- 
tection is largely to be entrusted to the industry itself, working 
cooperatively with the other legitimate protective agencies. 

My suggestions, therefore, to this end are : 

To form a closer cooperation between the various agencies 
for the protection of workers, including a centralization and 
unification of philanthropic bodies and their cooperation with 
labor organizations and industrial societies. 

To compel industrial employers to be responsible, in coopera- 
tion with the state, for the protection of their workers. 

Such a general concentration of forces on the improvement 
of industrial conditions would inevitably result in a more pro- 
gressive system of protection for workers than we now have. 

(668) 



THE EDUCATION OF MOTHERS AND THE SAVING 
OF BABIES 1 

PHILIP VAN INGEN, M. D. 
Medical Director, New York Milk Committee 

THE subject of infant mortality is too well known to you 
all to require many words from me. I wish merely to 
emphasize one or two facts which have a direct bearing 
on my subject. In a general way 25^ of the deaths of children 
under one year of age belong to that class vaguely called " wast- 
ing diseases " by the English, or equally vaguely " congenital 
debility and malnutrition " in our country. To this latter group 
belong deaths which we ascribe to marasmus, prematurity, con- 
genital debility, and so forth, thus clothing our ignorance in 
high-sounding terms. It is generally admitted that we can or 
ought to be able to prevent a large number of these deaths. 

The keynote of modern medical and philanthropic effort is 
prevention. It is strange how slow we have been to apply pre- 
ventive methods to the problem of infant mortality. Dispens- 
aries and hospitals do a much-needed work, but comparatively 
speaking their preventive work is, or has been till lately, far 
from efficient. 

The causes of infant mortality are many and varied. Practi- 
cally all the great social questions of to-day have a direct relation 
to the problem, but in the last analysis the great underlying 
causes are poverty and ignorance. Poverty is a problem we 
always have. Its effect upon a baby's chance to live will per- 
haps always exist to a certain extent ; but ignorance — and many 
things laid to poverty really should be laid in large part to 
ignorance — we can fight, prevent and cure. 

In Greater New York during the last few years the idea of 
instruction has been coming more and more to the front, and it 
is my belief, and that of the New York Milk Committee, whom 

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 1912. 

(669) 



1 96 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

I represent, that the instruction of the mother is our most valu- 
able weapon in preventing the waste of baby lives. It is 
within the reach of all organizations or groups trying to better 
conditions in their localities. 

The New York Milk Committee was one of a number of 
organizations to carry on last summer a vigorous campaign of 
education through milk stations. The keynote of the campaign 
was educational prevention of sickness through contact of mother 
and baby with nurse and physician. The necessity of maternal 
nursing was preached faithfully. Of 2,132 babies under obser- 
vation between June 1st and September 15th, 32.4^0 were 
breast-fed throughout. For those already weaned, or for whom 
breast feeding was impossible, pure milk was provided — not 
already prepared for the baby, but whole milk. The mother 
was taught at her home by the nurse to prepare the milk her- 
self according to the physician's orders. So important did we 
consider this instruction that milk was refused unless mothers 
attended consultations at the stations regularly and carried out 
instructions. 

But though this work was a most valuable one, it was found 
when we tabulated our statistics that only about 2 Jo of our 
babies were under two months of age, while about one-third of 
all baby deaths occur in the first month of life. We were still 
more impressed with the fact that to do our work we must get 
at those babies. I say still more, because we had already been 
working on these lines. Through the assistance of Dr. Hart of 
the Russell Sage Foundation we had been able to put one nurse 
on expectant mother work, and very soon had to add another. 

The figures given for total deaths under one year in New 
York city for 191 1 were 15,030, exclusive of still births. Still 
births totaled 6,378. In France statistics show that pregnancy 
lasts 20 days longer among women keeping moderately quiet 
during the latter months ; that children of women carrying on 
tiring work weigh about 220 grams (about 6 ounces) less than 
those doing moderate work; that the children of women keep- 
ing moderately quiet during the last two or three months of 
pregnancy weigh 300 grams (about 9 ounces) more than the 
children of those who work up to the last minute. In other 
words, the babies have a better start in life. 

(670) 



No. 4] THE SA VI NG OF BA BIES 1 9 j 

In France the Matualite Maternelle, which has spread all 
over the country, gives a small indemnity to pregnant women, 
allowing them to keep quiet during the last weeks of pregnancy 
and after labor, so that they can nurse their babies. In the 
Paris society in 1903, 12.8^ of all pregnancies resulted in still 
births or miscarriages. In 1904 there were only 7.5^; in 1905, 
6.jf>\ and in 1906, 4.5^. 

In the summer of 191 1 our nurses came into contact with 
nearly 1,000 expectant mothers. Five hundred of these have 
since been confined. Four of the babies were still born and 
there were three miscarriages. Eight babies died during the 
first month of life. In New York city about g^o ( or 4-7^) of 
all pregnancies were reported as ending in still birth. Early 
miscarriages in all probability would not be included in these 
figures, as they would not be reported. Among our 500 cases, 
counting both still births and miscarriages, the figure is 1.45&. 
Roughly speaking, 41.3 per thousand babies born in New York 
city died under one month of age; among our babies, 16 per 
thousand. 

The plan already being carried out, and very shortly to be 
greatly extended, is as follows : A nurse specially trained for 
her work is detailed to a definite district. Through cooperation 
with milk stations, dispensaries, and various social organizations, 
she gets into touch with expectant mothers. The effort is made 
to do so as early in pregnancy as possible. The family condi- 
tions are estimated by one or more visits to the home. The 
advice given is not cut-and-dried, but is adapted to the in- 
dividual needs and possibilities in the case. If it is a first baby, 
the mother is urged to go to a physician or hospital for ex- 
amination at once. She is told to keep herself in the best 
physical condition, is advised what to eat and what not to eat ; 
is urged to avoid hard work as far as possible during late preg- 
nancy. She is taught the necessity for the baby, and the saving 
to herself, of nursing it. She is told how to prepare clothing 
for the baby. She is urged not to intrust herself to an ig- 
norant midwife, but to go to a physician or hospital. She is 
helped to secure this attention by information and advice. She 
is seen by the nurse every week or ten days before confine- 

(671) 



198 



ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 



ment — oftener if necessary ; and afterward mother and baby are 
kept under observation for a month, by which time it is hoped 
they will be able to come under the care of a physician or milk 
station. 

This is a brief outline but should indicate the lines along 
which organizations doing neighborhood or settlement work, 
visiting nurses' associations, churches, general charitable organi- 
zations and milk stations can work to prevent the waste of 
infant lives and the misery and sorrow going therewith. 

Mr. Alderman Broadbent of Huddersfield, who, when he was 
mayor, was able in a single year to reduce greatly the infant 
mortality of his city by offering to every baby born in his term 
of office one pound in gold on its first birthday, says : " In 
motherhood, properly instructed and respected, there is a 
potentiality of health and well-being for future generations 
beyond the dreams of the most enthusiastic sanitarian." 

This is an effort, not only to save baby lives, but to make 
babies stronger and healthier from the very start, to make them 
still more worth saving. It should therefore appeal to the 
eugenist as well as to those who consider the waste of life a 
scandal in any community. 

(672) 



THE PROTECTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF 
IMMIGRANTS 

KATE HOLLADAY CLAGHORN 

Registrar of Records, Tenement House Department, New York 

THE most urgent social needs of New York city, of what- 
ever kind, are closely bound up with the city's immi- 
grant population. This port receives over two-thirds of 
the total immigration to the country each year, and this number 
makes its presence felt, either in transit to a final destination 
out of the city, or through residence, temporary or permanent, 
in the city. 

The mass of the incoming immigrants are poor, illiterate, 
ignorant of the country and its ways, and afraid of new ventures. 
Under the contract-labor law, moreover, they cannot secure 
themselves by definite offers of work which might induce many 
of them to pass at once through the city to the interior. 

In consequence large numbers of the new immigrants linger 
in the city, for the immediate practical advantages they gain. 
This city, in particular, both because of and in spite of its 
crowded population, is the great labor market for the unskilled, 
and here the newly arrived immigrant finds, as he does not in 
smaller towns, others of his own kind, who speak his language 
and know his ways, while they have also become used to the 
ways of the new country, and are able to give him the first 
lessons he needs in order to gain a foothold. 

Against the immediate material advantages to the immigrant 
of this lingering in the city, however, must be set the social and 
moral disadvantages to the immigrant himself, and to the city 
he is overfilling. A great influx of poor people into a restricted 
area means bad housing — overcrowding, lack of light and ventila- 
tion, lack of privacy, and difficult sanitation — conditions which 
make strongly toward physical and moral degeneracy. Condi- 
tions of labor, though temporarily favorable, are not perma- 
nently so. Though employment is easily gained in the big 

(673) 



200 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

labor market, the work offered is of a low grade and is likely to 
be periodic or temporary, while the wages are low. This tends 
to keep the immigrant a shifting, underpaid laborer, unable to 
maintain a decent, permanent home. 

Moreover, the big foreign colony of a city, while affording a 
welcome refuge for the new immigrant, has its own evil influ- 
ences to throw about him. In the colony swarm sharpers of 
every description, who make their living entirely at the expense 
of their inexperienced and poverty-stricken countrymen. They 
meet him at the very port of entry, and begin the fleecing pro- 
cess by outrageous charges for transportation, expressage and 
hotel accommodations. Then come extravagant charges for 
procuring the immediate job on which his life depends. Then 
" bankers " come to the front, ready to absorb the little savings 
as they begin to accumulate, and convert to their own use what 
was meant for the helpless family at home, or for the starting 
of the little business which would give comparative independ- 
ence. And so on, — the list is endless. 

As a result of all these conditions, is it any wonder that the 
city has to struggle under a considerable burden of foreign 
dependence and delinquency? 

For many years, private agencies have been at work to 
obviate some of these evils — to protect the immigrant from ex- 
tortion on his first arrival, to find him employment, and if 
possible to get him out of the city. Different religious bodies 
and organizations representing different nationalities have 
maintained immigrant homes and employment agencies near 
the landing station, and have had accredited agents at the 
station to protect helpless newcomers. Some of these societies 
in their turn having developed abuses of their own have been 
suppressed by the immigration authorities, and others have 
taken their place. 

With the beginning of the great influx of Hebrews, some 
twenty years ago, special work in their behalf was started by 
Jewish philanthropists, and with the coming of the Italians, 
means of protection and aid were provided especially for 
them. The most notable large undertaking for the benefit of 
Hebrew immigrants is that supported by the Baron de Hirsch 

(674) 



No. 4] THE PROTECTION OF IMMIGRANTS 2 OI 

Fund, and an especially interesting feature of this work has 
been that of inducing emigration from the crowded cities to 
agricultural districts. It must be confessed that no large dimin- 
ution of city crowding has been made by these efforts ; for, ac- 
cording to information gathered in 1909 by the Jewish Agricul- 
tural and Industrial Aid Society, which carries on the agricultural 
work of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, there were only about 15,000 
Hebrews in rural communities all over the United States. The 
number of farms worked by Hebrews was said to be 2,701, and 
the number of farmers was 3,040. This society, realizing that 
attempts to colonize a non-agricultural people on cheap un- 
improved land cannot be expected to succeed, has recently 
made provision for instruction in farming on an experimental 
farm established in Long Island. This is in addition to the well- 
known farm schools in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 

As far as the experiment in agricultural transplantation has 
gone with the Hebrew, it has been found to have a beneficial 
effect. There has been an especial improvement in physical 
health, and the ownership of land has developed independence, 
self-reliance and self-respect. 

A more promising avenue of distribution of Hebrew immi- 
grants, as far as numbers is concerned, is that along industrial 
rather than agricultural lines. The Industrial Removal Office 
has been engaged for the past eleven years in finding homes 
and employment outside of New York city for Hebrew immi- 
grants and their families, mainly in industrial pursuits. During 
that period they have established 58,415 persons (of whom 
about 30,000 were wage-earners) in 1,388 cities and towns, 
53,704 of the number being sent out by the New York office, 
and 4,711 by the Philadelphia and Boston branches. Of those 
sent out from New York, 31,638, or nearly 60 fc, went to the 
central states, 14^ found homes in the Middle Atlantic, 13^) 
in the western and 10^5 in the southern states. 

The report of this society observes that the work of removal 
is difficult, owing to " the prejudice and timidity of our appli- 
cants regarding the unknown lands to which they were contem- 
plating removing." Even with outside aid it takes the immi- 
grant some time to make up his mind to move, as is seen from 

(675) 



202 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

the statement in the report that of the persons removed in 191 1 
over three-quarters had been in New York over three years. It 
is interesting to note that 2 1 fo of the wage-earners distributed in 
ten years of activity followed the needle trades, and 30 fo had no 
definite trade. This last group included peddlers. It is also 
interesting to find that less than 2 fo of the removals made have 
turned out to be unsatisfactory or are still doubtful. Nearly all 
of the persons removed have remained and succeeded in the 
places to which they were originally sent. 

An organization covering the field of immediate protection 
for arriving Jewish immigrants is the Hebrew Sheltering and 
Immigrant Aid Society. This society proposes to " keep track 
of each and every Jewish immigrant passing through the port 
of New York " — not only to see that they reach their destina- 
tion in safety, but to look after their further welfare by way of 
helping to secure employment and discouraging settlement in 
congested cities. This society has found it comparatively easy 
to follow up the Jewish immigrants whose destination is outside 
of New York, and reports that " immigrants in the interior are all 
self-supporting, are eager to learn English, and bring even their 
babies to the kindergarten." But much more difficulty has been 
experienced in keeping in touch with the large mass who settle 
down in the city, either temporarily or permanently. 

A strong organization, the Society for Italian Immigrants, 
enjoying a subvention from the Italian government in addition 
to a private subscription list, does a similar work for Italian 
immigrants. This society meets Italian immigrants at the pier, 
gives escort service and shelter, finds employment, looks after the 
transmission of money, and in short, takes the place of " next 
friend" to the newcomer in whatever way he needs it. 
During the year 191 1, nearly 24,000 emigrants and immigrants 
were escorted, nearly 18,000 were lodged at the home of the 
society, and over $28,000 of the immigrants' money was cared 
for or transmitted. 

This society has furthermore taken a hand in the very neces- 
sary task of educating the illiterate immigrant. Under its 
auspices, the first schools in labor camps were started for 
instruction in English, and these schools have afforded not only 

(676) 



No. 4] THE PROTECTION OF IMMIGRANTS 203 

this necessary first step to good citizenship, but a useful social 
diversion to lonely men shut up in the unnatural surroundings 
of a temporary camp. 

Of especial interest are the society's efforts to procure work 
for Italian immigrants and to assist in the process of distribu- 
tion. This society is now the principal non-commercial em- 
ployment exchange for Italians, having recently taken over the 
work of a labor bureau for Italians formerly under the auspices 
of the Italian government. 

During the past year 3,493 immigrants applied for work at 
the society's bureau, and requests for 1,425 laborers were made, 
but only 528 laborers were actually placed. A light not only 
upon this misfit, but upon the whole question of the agricultural 
distribution of immigrants is thrown by the statement in the 
report for 19 12 that 

requests for Italian farm hands are persistent, but not of the kind any 
capable or intelligent Italian farm hand would accept. Wages and 
conditions offered are, as a rule, below any passable living standard, 
and the Italian farmer has grown to understand that unless a contract 
or a clear statement is offered him , he is often deprived of his legiti- 
mate earnings or taken advantage of in some way. 

Other societies and individuals in the past have made efforts 
to transplant Italians to agricultural regions, but the net result 
of this work in numbers of persons settled is not large. Of all 
the Italian working men now in the country only a little over 
6°fo are engaged in agricultural pursuits, although it is estimated 
that over 6ofi come from rural districts of Italy, where practi- 
cally all were farmers or farm laborers. Throughout the coun- 
try, however, are found agricultural settlements of Italians, many 
of them started by outside aid, ranging from groups of two or 
three households to three hundred and fifty households, which 
are prospering, and which serve as nuclei for further accretions. 

A society calling itself the North American Civic League for 
Immigrants was started in 1908 with the ambitious purpose of 
looking after all the immigrants throughout the country, and 
of " doing all things which will result in making immigrants 
into efficient Americans." Its program includes protection, 

(677) 



204 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

education, distribution and assimilation, and is to be carried out 
by correlating the work of all agencies now busy among immi- 
grants, rather than by doing direct work of its own. 

In New York, the league has organized an immigrant guide 
and transfer system, has assisted in bringing immigrant children 
to the schools, has conducted investigations, and has made a 
survey of the New York laws affecting immigrants, with a view 
to the enforcement, repeal and amendment of such laws. It is 
difficulty however, to measure the actual accomplishment of this 
league in any very definite way, as its reports are more largely 
taken up with the evils to be combated than with results of the 
combat. 

It must be plain after even so incomplete a sketch as the 
present that private organizations are not by any means cover- 
ing the field of protection and distribution, though their activi- 
ties are most creditable in view of the restricted means at their 
disposal. 

It would seem that governmental bodies, with their greater 
resources and their more comprehensive powers of control, must 
be invoked to attain the greater accomplishment desired. This 
has recently been done by the creation in 1910 of a new bureau 
of industries and immigration in the state department of labor, 
to carry on for New York state the same big tasks with which 
the private organizations have been struggling. Unfortunately, 
the report of its first year's work seems to show a smaller 
record of accomplishment than the same year's work of the 
stronger private bodies. 

One reason is obvious. Although the bureau has had laid 
upon it a multiplicity of mandatory duties, it was given, as its 
first year's appropriation, less than $10,000, an amount less than 
one-third of the annual income of the Society for Italian Immi- 
grants. Another reason is that too small a proportion of the 
bureau's work is directly administrative, and too much of its 
time has been taken up with investigations which served mainly 
to reveal conditions of abuse already familiar, and with scatter- 
ing tasks of unofficial cooperation, the results of which cannot 
be seen or measured. 

This bureau has succeeded, however, in securing greater 

(678) 



No. 4] THE PROTECTION OF IMMIGRANTS 205 

safety for immigrants' savings through the better regulation of 
immigrant banks, has brought under state control the employ- 
ment agencies dealing chiefly with aliens, has registered and 
inspected homes and philanthropic organizations which dis- 
tribute aliens, and has secured the passage of an immigrant 
lodging-place law, which is applicable to labor camps and will 
assist in reducing the evils which flourish in such communities. 

The federal government itself has taken a hand in the general 
work through its newly-created division of information in the 
bureau of immigration. This division attempts to provide the 
entering immigrant with reliable information as to the country 
and its resources, which will help him to find his way to the 
interior of the country and secure employment. The division 
was organized under the Immigration Law of 1907, and has 
done a creditable amount of work since that time. In 191 1, 
over 30,000 applicants received information for themselves and 
others, representing perhaps over 100,000 people helped by the 
division. Of the applicants for that year, 1 ,293 were Hebrews, 
and only 624 were Italians, while 1,629 were Danes, 1,568 Nor- 
wegians, 1,882 Swedes, 5,148 Germans and 5,211 Poles — the 
latter all peoples who naturally take to agriculture, and all, ex- 
cept the Poles, of the early immigration. During the year this 
division actually distributed 5,176 immigrants, of whom 1,127 
were Germans and 1,044 were Poles. Only 51 Hebrews and 51 
Italians were placed by this means. 

It seems that even government bodies are not accomplishing 
a great deal in comparison with the mass of immigrants to be 
dealt with. What may be suggested as a more adequate means 
for meeting the situation than those now being employed ? 

Perhaps the surest method is a drastic restriction of immigra- 
tion, so that we shall not be swamped by an ever-rising flood, 
while endeavoring to cope with the numbers already here. In 
the past the problem seemed simpler. It was thought that with 
an adequate entrance test, excluding undesirable immigrants, 
and with the great demand for unskilled labor caused by our 
developing industries, the immigrant once admitted could shift 
for himself, with no further damage to himself or the commu- 
nity than slight incidental disturbances arising in the course of 

adjustment. 

(679) 



206 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

We have come to see that adjustment is no such simple mat- 
ter. The administration of entrance tests is a more or less 
wholesale affair, and is the work of a day or an hour or a 
minute, perhaps, for each immigrant. The work of protection 
and distribution after the immigrant arrives, on the other hand, 
must be intensive and individual ; it must extend over periods 
of months or years. 

If we cannot have restriction to help us catch up with our 
work, a measure of help to New York would be the diversion of 
immigration by government regulation of some sort, to other 
ports, nearer to the sparsely settled territory where immigrants 
are desired. In default of federal aid along this line, the state 
and the city may help by taking measures to distribute indus- 
tries as well as laborers. It has been shown that the great 
attraction of the city to the immigrant is the opportunity for 
employment it offers. New York is not only a great trading 
center, it is also one of the greatest factory cities in the world, 
and the removal of a considerable proportion of the factories 
from crowded centers to suburban districts, through discrimi- 
nating taxation or otherwise, would mean an automatic disper- 
sion of our foreign working population. Other means are the 
improvements in transportation and housing that we need for 
our population at large, and finally, of course, a continued 
development of the agencies already at work, both public and 
private. 

(680) 



CHARITABLE RELIEF 

W. FRANK PERSONS 
Superintendent, Charity Organization Society of the City of New York 

TO all thoughtful persons the term " charitable relief" 
signifies more than assistance in the form of monetary 
aid. It comprehends also the great variety of services, 
material and other, which are bestowed upon needy persons by 
individuals and by the rapidly increasing number of agencies 
now doing practical, personal work in the homes of the poor. 

The next step to be taken in the administration of charitable 
relief, as thus defined, is in the direction of securing unity and 
efficiency in such social service. This conclusion becomes 
obvious upon a study of the present situation and the prevailing 
tendencies in charitable endeavor. 

There are more than a thousand private institutions and 
societies in New York city offering charitable relief to the poor. 
During the past five years there has been a remarkable extension 
and diversification of the help available for the destitute and 
suffering, especially in the sphere of public medical service. 
About twenty social-service departments of hospitals and dis- 
pensaries have been established. It is their purpose to put 
physicians in touch with home conditions, to relate patients to 
other agencies whose services may be needed, and to enable 
discharged patients to re-establish themselves permanently in 
the industrial world without the extraordinary strain which too 
often occurs. 

There is now complete sanitary supervision of tuberculosis. 
Hundreds of nurses are visiting the homes of those patients who 
do not employ private physicians. These nurses do not, and 
cannot, ignore factors affecting the health and welfare of other 
members of such families as well as of the patients themselves. 

There are hundreds of visiting school nurses. Each one 
realizes that the child's physical defect, which it is her business 
to have corrected, is frequently a symptom of unfavorable home 

(681) 



208 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

conditions. These may require not only her attention but the 
services of one or of several special agencies to assure the 
continuing health of the child. 

The teacher nurses and milk-station nurses, who in growing 
numbers are rendering increasingly valuable services in the 
homes of the poor, cannot succeed in their work as they wish to 
do without full knowledge of the needs and resources of each of 
the families with which they deal. 

There is certain to be a further extension of social service in 
connection with medical relief. This is but another way of 
saying that there is certain to be a wider and deeper apprecia- 
tion of the necessity of considering and treating the needs of the 
whole family, even when the illness of one member seems to 
require special attention. 

This reference to the development taking place in the work 
of medical agencies is but an illustration of the growing con- 
sciousness, spreading widely throughout the community, that 
the real relief of need, in most instances, means the treatment 
of a family problem. The whole family must be considered 
with respect to the conditions, needs and possibilities of each of 
its members. The treatment of the whole problem thus pre- 
sented must be continued until self-dependence becomes possi- 
ble and assured, or until some form of continuing assistance is 
provided. Otherwise results worth while will not be attained. 

In striving to attain such results, which are the only results 
worthy the ideals of present-day charitable relief, the agencies 
concerned are delving deeper into the essential facts of their 
cases, making broader plans, holding more persistently to their 
purposes, keeping more useful records and developing a more 
cooperative spirit. They are drawing closer together in their 
work with particular families. They are uniting to attack, in 
accord with a common plan, the problems there presented. 

It is generally conceded that this working together is mutually 
helpful and that it makes for efficiency and economy. That it 
occurs too infrequently is due largely to the fact that there is 
no common, ready and certain means of information as to all 
that is being done for any particular family. 

It seems clear, therefore, that the next step to be taken in 

(682) 



No. 4] CHARITABLE RELIEF 209 

the organization of charitable relief in this city is to find the 
means and the method by which such information may be made 
quickly available upon inquiry — or even without inquiry. It is 
entirely practicable, by a simple device, to enable each of the 
various agencies whose work may at any time be focused upon 
the same family to share in the knowledge, experience and plans 
of the others. The instrument which may be employed for this 
purpose is the Confidential Exchange of Information, for which 
there is now in this city a most pressing need. 

The Confidential Exchange of Information will become a 
central bureau of registration of the names and addresses of all 
the families under care of those agencies which make use of it. 
For each of these families there will be a card on which will be 
written also the names of all the agencies who are, or have been 
in touch with the family and who have records or available 
knowledge concerning it. No other information will be recorded 
save that which is necessary to assure identification — as, for 
instance, the names and ages of children, and the ages and 
occupations of other members of the family. 

It is perhaps desirable to emphasize the confidential character 
of such an exchange of information. The number of names 
registered in New York city would in a short time become very 
large. A consolidation of the present registration bureaus of 
the Charity Organization Society, the Association for Improving 
the Condition of the Poor and the United Hebrew Charities 
would afford an initial registration of nearly three hundred 
thousand names. Any one name would be absolutely lost in 
such a vast number and would come to the attention only of 
those interested persons who might make inquiry concerning 
the family. Although personal interests and feelings would 
thus be carefully protected, the mass of registration itself would 
afford many social data of value in determining the character, 
prevalence and causes of need, and in planning further preven- 
tive and constructive effort. The extent to which studies for 
such purposes could be carried would be limited only by the 
time and money available to keep the necessary records. The 
exchange would thus become the means of a general public 
service. Its immediate purpose, however, and its greatest value 

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210 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

would be in the every-day work of the administration of 
charitable relief. 

Any society or interested individual about to investigate the 
needs of a family or to give assistance should first of all make 
inquiry of the Confidential Exchange either by letter or by 
telephone, preferably the latter. Instantly the names of all 
other agencies already acquainted with the family would be- 
come known. The exchange would, in turn, at once notify 
each of these agencies of the new inquiry. Its responsibility 
would then end, and it would lie with the agencies concerned to 
confer, to share their information and their plans, and to make 
such new plans as the occasion might require. 

The Confidential Exchange, as thus conducted, will safeguard 
the privacy of the families whose names are registered, by 
avoiding duplication of investigation. A family under the 
continuing and sufficient care of one organization will be pro- 
tected against the undesirable and unintentional invasion of its 
home by another society. In instances where cooperation is 
desirable the use of the exchange will afford opportunity for 
effective team work by the various agencies whose services are 
required. 

There need be no unconscious interference by one society or 
individual with the success of plans carefully made and worked 
out by someone else, as now frequently occurs. The families 
themselves may be saved from the confusion and distraction of 
the conflicting plans of agencies not in cooperation. The 
various agencies in the community will surely profit by a saving 
of time, effort and money, by interchange of experiences and 
by closer relationships. 

The essential purpose and most valuable service of the Con- 
fidential Exchange, however, will be in promoting cooperation 
and in stimulating thereby the development of thorough-going 
case treatment. Concerted and effective action, as early in the 
history of the family's need as possible, will result in rehabilita- 
tion of family life in a larger proportion of cases. This is the 
basis of our hope for the reduction of the number of persons 
in poverty, and for the development of preventive measures to 
eradicate many of the causes which now bring the poor into 

distress. 

(684) 



SOCIAL WORK OF THE NEW YORK SCHOOLS « 

JOHN MARTIN 
Member Board of Education, New York City 

WITH all modesty it may be asserted that New York city 
continues to lead the continent, and probably the 
world, in the social use of the buildings, grounds, and 
staff of the school system. So extensive are the activities of 
the board of education outside of purely educational work, so 
generous is the expenditure on recreation, music, dancing, con- 
certs, lectures and the like, that few citizens, even in New York 
itself, realize what a wide and well-managed social work is con- 
ducted regularly in the school buildings at public expense. 
Not infrequently, when some smaller city imitates one or two 
of New York's multiform and well-established school activities, 
— recreation centers, evening lectures for adults, mixed dances 
or the like — the experiment is proclaimed throughout the land 
as a brand-new, daringly original feat, a signal discovery of a 
socialist mayor or of a wonderfully efficient commission govern- 
ment. 

In the winter season just closed the recreation centers of 
Greater New York have been attended nightly, six times a week, 
from October to May, by over 17,500 people. Some 650 clubs 
— athletic, literary, social, musical, civic, dramatic, dancing and 
parental — each with its regular organization, have found in 
these centers a comfortable home, teachers to advise and help, 
and facilities of all sorts. Boys and girls have played parlor 
games, practised gymastics under trained instructors, and com- 
peted for basket-ball trophies. Those of a more intellectual 
turn have attended literary clubs, where readings, recitations, 
essays and debates on current topics have filled the evening. 

1 Expanded from remarks made in discussion at the meeting of The Academy of 
Political Science, April 18, 1912. Reprinted by permission from The Survey of 
May 18th, 1912. 

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212 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

Forty-one centers included classes in vocal and instrumental 
music in which forty or fifty youths and maidens, under the 
guidance of a competent pianist, have sung such old and popu- 
lar airs as " Way Down Upon the Suwanee River " and " The Star- 
spangled Banner." Often, to vary the proceedings, some bud- 
ding Caruso or Sembrich would come forward with characteris- 
tic musicianly diffidence to warble a solo. On other evenings a 
cornet or a violin in skilled hands would make the rafters ring. 
A few years of such training will doubtless make the citizens of 
New York as musical as those of any German city and will open 
new avenues of enjoyment to thousands. 

While social workers have been lamenting the vicious in- 
fluence of dancing halls, the board of education has deprived 
these resorts of many prospective customers by conducting, at 
fifteen centers, mixed dancing classes under proper chaperon- 
age. The board furnished piano music and often the clubs 
themselves added to the gaiety by bringing cornets and violins. 
Good music with jolly and modest dances was encouraged. 
Little effort was necessary to bar the grizzly bear, the turkey 
trot and other indecencies which have invaded high society. 

Boy Scouts have held regular meetings for drill and organiza- 
tion under the patronage of the board of education, to which 
no scheme for the physical or moral uplift of youngsters or 
their parents seems to come amiss. Still looking for new ways 
to be of service, the board recently granted the use of a school 
building to a special committee which has undertaken to organ- 
ize neighborhood activities and to correlate the lectures, the 
people's forums, the musical evenings, the clubs and the classes. 
It expects to demonstrate how neighbors of all ages and tastes 
may be accommodated in the school building to still further 
advantage. 

Under the will of the late Joseph Pulitzer money was left to 
supply concerts of the highest quality, free of charge, to the 
masses. The board of education gladly cooperated by grant- 
ing the use of the assembly halls and organs in the high schools. 
Consequently a series of orchestral and vocal performances, not 
unfit to be classed with the Philharmonic concerts, has been 
given in many sections of the city to very large audiences. 

(686) 



No. 4] SOCIAL WORK OF THE NEW YORK SCHOOLS 2 I$ 

Even the moving-picture theaters have not gone unchallenged. 
In cooperation with a committee of the People's Institute, a 
series of educational moving-picture exhibitions was shown to 
great crowds of spectators. Though the somewhat overzealous 
interference of the fire department, which objected to the form 
of protection provided for the lanterns, stopped this work tem- 
porarily, no doubt it will be resumed. After a trial of Sunday- 
evening concerts and lectures under the management of a vol- 
untary committee, the free use of some high-school assembly 
halls was recently granted for two series of meetings, which 
promise to be as useful to the non-church-goers as the gather- 
ings which have made Cooper Union famous. A new departure 
has been made by allowing a collection to be taken toward de- 
fraying expenses. This clears the audience of the sense of being 
pauperized, and, by reducing the cost of the performances, ren- 
ders extension of the work more easy. 

Apart from the recreation centers the public lecture system 
continues to flourish. About a million adults have attended 
the illustrated lectures in science, civics, history, travel, music, 
art and literature. All were given by competent lecturers, who 
were bound to hold their audiences by the interest and force of 
their remarks, since, unlike college students, the listeners were 
free to show their displeasure with poor work by quietly with- 
drawing or by staying away. 

Funds have been provided for continuing, though not for 
enlarging, during the coming summer, the social activities in 
the vacation, evening, roof and open-air playgrounds for chil- 
dren and mothers and babies, which last year were conspicu- 
ously successful and extensive. In 191 1 no fewer than 832 
teachers were employed in aiding 125,500 daily visitors at these 
various play centers to amuse themselves rationally and health- 
fully — a regiment of school soldiers of the common good which 
no other city could duplicate. Swings, seesaws, and other ap- 
paratus were so vigorously used that it is doubtful whether they 
will last through another season. Mothers and babies sought 
the quiet and shade of their special playgrounds. On the roof 
playgrounds bands of musicians played for promenaders and 
girl dancers. Gymnasts, baseball and basket-ball players and 

(687) 



2 1 4 ORGANIZA TION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

folk dancers practised for tournaments or simply played for the 
fun of playing. Nobody can measure the good which the 248 
playgrounds did for the hundreds of thousands who made up 
the aggregate attendance of 5,955,160. 

Altogether, the tale of the social uses of the New York 
schools is encouraging and creditable. Much remains to be 
done, which the board of education is eager to do as soon as 
the keepers of Father Knickerbocker's purse will permit; but 
enough has been accomplished to prove the beneficence and 
wisdom of utilizing to the full the buildings, the organization 
and the teaching skill of the school system for social enjoyment 
and elevation. 

(688) 



COOPERATION OF THE CHURCHES IN HOUSING 

REFORM ■ 

JAMES JENKINS, JR. 
Director of the Department of Social Betterment, Brooklyn Bureau of Charities 

FROM our experience on the Tenement House Committee 
I believe that social workers have not sufficiently appre- 
ciated the importance of connecting the churches with 
various social movements. I will refer briefly to a campaign in 
Brooklyn. The Tenement House Committee took up a specific 
piece of work, the elimination of the dark room, realizing that 
it was a source of immorality and disease. We secured the 
cooperation of the churches, giving each church a specific 
district. In each district they were to see if the tenements had 
dark rooms, if so to report them, also to follow up these cases 
and see that the city department did its work. The result was 
that forty thousand dark rooms were eliminated in Brooklyn. 
I think that the reason the churches have not been more active 
in social work is because they do not generally understand 
what they are to do. Our experience showed that if the work 
was explained to them exactly they would go ahead and do it. 

We are going to take up the sanitary conditions next, and 
we wish again to have the churches' help. In this case they 
will be given certain districts and will be asked to do the same 
kind of work that they did before. The Brooklyn Men and 
Religion Movement suggested that there should be a committee 
in each church, made up of a lawyer, a doctor and a business 
man, to consider all legislative measures and act immediately 
in supporting or opposing them. The favorable progress of 
tenement legislation during the past year was largely due to its 
consistent backing in New York. 

As a forward step in housing reform, would it not be a good 
plan to form tenants' guilds of the people in a group of tene- 

1 Discussion at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 1912. 

(689) 



2x6 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

ments, a block or a street or a small section of a district, and 
try to interest the people to keep their houses in as good con- 
dition as possible ; also to teach them to use the various safety 
devices? 

I wish to endorse heartily the suggestion made by Mr. 
Veiller for the regulation of two-family houses. Many of 
these houses have as bad conditions in the way of dark rooms 
and bad plumbing as the worst tenements. We are told that 
room-overcrowding is unhealthy and increases immorality, but 
we have never had a competent investigation to show the exact 
results of this congestion. This investigation could be best 
made by night inspection. This inspection would be difficult 
but it could be accomplished and it would give us the real 
facts about room-overcrowding. 

(690) 



RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIAL WORK 

ADDRESSES AT THE DINNER OF THE ACADEMY OF POLITICAL 
SCIENCE, THURSDAY EVENING, APRIL I 8, 1912 

President Lindsay : The subject for this evening's discus- 
sion is " Religious Organizations and Social Work." Religious 
organizations from the beginning have been engaged in social 
work, and social workers are necessarily engaged in religious 
work. That is a fundamental point to keep in mind in a dis- 
cussion like this. Monsignor Mooney, the personal representa- 
tive of Cardinal Farley, will open our discussion. 

Monsignor Mooney: As the chairman has stated, my 
part in this evening's proceedings is to represent Cardinal Farley, 
who is necessarily absent. If he were here, he would be pleased 
to signify his appreciation of the courtesy of the Academy in 
extending the kind invitation to him to be their guest, as well 
as his accord with the general purposes and aims of the Acad- 
emy. This is what he charged me to say and I only regret 
that he himself is not here to say it, for in that case, it is 
needless to remark, it would be much better said. 

Speaking then solely for myself, I would aver that the religi- 
ous body to which I belong believes that she will attain success 
in social work by cooperating with that intelligent and broad- 
minded public with whose views upon the ethical side of social 
questions she in general agrees. This is the stand which she 
is willing and ready to take. To the church it is most gratify- 
ing to feel that on this platform she can come to agreement 
with men of good-will, and men who are sincere in their desire 
for the right. Yet she does not forget that her primary end 
in the world is not really the solution of the social problems 
as they arise from time to time. She maintains that she has a 
special mission to fulfil at all times and that to carry out that 
mission is the reason of her existence. That mission indeed 
does not* have regard primarily to social problems, yet the 

(691) 



2i8 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

church must help solve social problems, and she rejoices that in 
this work she is able to join hands with all men who seek the 
amelioration of the race, and especially men who seek to pro- 
tect labor and throw around it all the safeguards demanded by 
eternal justice itself. She ever bears in mind the injunction 
given of old, which history itself has only made more evident, 
namely, that " justice exalteth a nation and evil maketh a nation 
wretched." Justice is called for particularly in the social con- 
ditions of life : the justice that teaches us our duties to our 
neighbor; the justice that teaches us where rightful competition 
ends and oppression begins ; the justice that makes good to 
man the right to happiness, to comfort, to peace, to liberty. 
This is what the church has contended for, and she sincerely 
rejoices when she can join in any movement that looks toward 
the moral and social welfare of the people ; for her conception 
of patriotism itself is a patriotism founded upon the principles 
of unchanging righteousness. It is only those laws which take 
into account the moral principles that she holds, which will, as 
she is convinced, conserve the true relation and proportion 
between matters of human and of divine import, between the 
temporal and the eternal. Only such principles, placing the 
well-being of humanity in connection with an eternity, can 
offer a beneficent and permanent solution to social problems. 

Again speaking for him whom I represent, I desire to repeat 
his personal appreciation of the honor that has been extended 
to him by the Academy, and to express his sense of gratifica- 
tion in the existence in this community of a body such as this 
Academy, whose principles and whose activities make it not 
only possible, but most agreeable for him and for the church 
that he represents, to stand with them in their devotion to those 
principles and in their practical application of them to the up- 
lifting of society. 

President Lindsay : The great church, numbering its ad- 
herents by the millions, which the last speaker has just repre- 
sented, is perhaps no more numerous than the great body of 
persons interested in religious work, although not members of 
any one church, which is represented by the next speaker, 

(692) 



No. 4] ADDRESSES A T THE DINNER 2 1 9 

Bishop Hendrix of Kansas City, President of the Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ in America. 

Bishop Hendrix : It is a great delight to live in these days 
when our differences are being forgotten in the consciousness 
of our agreements. Whatever differences exist in a general 
way between religious bodies of different names to-day, our 
teamwork for the race is making us more and more unmindful 
of the differences and more and more delightfully conscious of 
the points of agreement. 

When our fathers were just finishing their work of framing 
the constitution of our country, Edward Gibbon was completing 
his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His work was to 
prove an object-lesson for all people, and for none more than 
for that greatest nation of modern times, the United States. 
What smote Rome to its fall? Carnal impurity and covetous- 
ness. Are we in no danger in our own land from these two 
evils which have smitten to the death every nation that has ever 
fallen ? I crave for my land that every child be born in wed- 
lock and physically fit to live : that it have the opportunities of 
elementary education ; that it be saved from the dwarfing and 
degrading influence of child labor; that it have the sanctities 
of a home, and not the corrupting influences of a one-room 
tenement ; that it have religious training and religious oppor- 
tunity so that its moral nature shall be instructed and taught 
along these essential lines. I lift up my voice to-night for the 
protection of the youth of our land against all corruption, and 
I crave greater vigor on the part of the pulpit. Let us 
strengthen and upbuild our youth, let us cry out with fierceness 
against all wrong-doing until we shall hear an awakened con- 
science cry, " Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is 
good." Then we shall establish and protect our youth and 
make possible that blessed eugenics that is to bless the nations 
all round the world. 

President Lindsay : I am in doubt whether to present the 
next speaker as a great religious teacher, a representative of a 
great church organization, or a civic leader renowned for his 
service in public life — Rabbi Hirsch, of Chicago. 

(693) 



220 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

Rabbi Hirsch : If anybody has the right to claim fellowship 
with a movement like this, it is the religious community of 
which I happen to be the representative to-night; for if one 
accent is struck more strongly than another by the religious 
proclamation held to be true by this community, it is the cry 
for justice. We of the liberal interpretation of the ancient 
Biblical literature have good ground for holding that this was 
the new note sounded by the ancient Hebrew prophets. They 
were teachers, not so much of a new theology as of a new 
social conscience, and what stirred their wrath was not in reality 
the idol-worship, but those vices and those forms of social ex- 
ploitation that had received their sanction in the name of the 
foreign deities worshipped in the Holy Land. Justice is the note 
struck in the warnings, admonitions and teachings of the ancient 
seers of Israel ; it runs through the whole of Israel's conscious- 
ness, this cry for justice, a cry most pathetic if it be remembered 
that they who believed in the ultimate triumph of justice were 
held for many a century the victims of injustice. To-day in 
the synagogue, wherever this is understood, the pulpit is vocal 
with the thunder of Sinai, because it pleads for justice and 
condemns injustice of whatever kind. 

The great Master's word that His kingdom was not of this 
world has, according to our understanding of the Jewish phrase- 
ology that he must have used, been entirely misunderstood. 
Of course, the world by which he was surrounded was not the 
world of the kingdom. Neither in Rome nor in Jerusalem was 
justice enthroned ; neither in Rome nor in Jerusalem in those 
days was the law understood, the law of love, the law of re- 
sponsibility, the law of solidarity, that makes every man the 
keeper of his brother man ; neither in Rome nor in Jerusalem 
in those days did they know that whenever man turns aside 
from his brother man and pleads that he is not his brother's 
keeper, he commits murder, as did he who uttered this insolent, 
impious expression as recorded in holy writ. Therefore the 
Master was right in saying that his kingdom was not of this 
world. What he meant, as we understand his words, was that 
the world was to be changed so as to square with the implica- 
tion of the kingdom, and that is the social ambition of the 
synagogue, to change the world into a Kingdom of God. 

(694) 



No. 4] ADDRESSES AT THE DINNER 2 2 I 

What does that mean? Our religion teaches that every man 
is made in the image of God. Therefore it insists that no man 
shall be deprived, in consequence of social pressure, of the 
attributes involved in his being made in the likeness of the 
Creator. When social conditions are such that man is degraded 
to the level of a mere pair of hands ; and when these hands are 
bought and sold as are the dead things in the market, at market 
rate, when men are subject to the law of supply and demand — 
then the law of solidarity of the human race is outraged and 
broken, and conditions are such that no man can live up to the 
divinity implanted in his soul by God. Man is more than a 
pair of hands to be bought and sold at the lowest price, or to 
be offered at the highest price. With the hands goes a heart, 
and with the heart goes love, and with the love goes much more 
than is compensated for in the tabulation of wage and the cal- 
culation of profit. We are all stirred to our utmost depth when 
the story is told of human degradation superinduced, maybe, 
by human avarice, or invited by human passion, and many a 
victim has sunk underneath the waves of the ocean of vice 
simply because social conditions were not such that the victim 
could maintain his, and in a thousand cases her, divinity. She 
had to sell herself for bread, not out of lust ; and the civiliza- 
tion that allows this form of slavery, or slavery of a social or 
economic kind, the slavery of little children in the factories, 
that civilization indeed is not of the Kingdom. Our church 
wishes that every one coming under its influence shall strive to 
help build up out of social elements a Kingdom of God. Or, 
in other words, according to the teaching of my religion, prop- 
erty is not the primary but the secondary consideration. Per- 
sonality, morality, character, and humanity are much more 
valuable than any right of property, and property has rights 
only when property assumes and discharges the duties that go 
with those rights. 

Far be it from me to dispute that as long as humanity shall 
exist there will be differences. Some are born with the capac- 
ity for stewarding property ; others are gifted in other direc- 
tions. We must serve each one at a definite place, so that out 
of our service the well-being of society may develop. We can- 

(695) 



222 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

not be equal in function, though we can be equal in worth and 
in worthiness, and many a one who is a hewer of wood and a 
drawer of water is much worthier than one who commands 
thousands of lives and holds them to a grindstone in a factory- 
organized merely on the principle of the least expense, with a 
view to the largest return to a stockholder or private owner. 

Society, as we understand it, is based on this differentiation 
of men, but it preaches, according to my religion, the law of 
selection. We are elected to be what we are by God, and 
therefore, according to this doctrine, we are responsible to 
society or to God for the use we make of that which God has 
placed within our charge. We are not the owners of our lives, 
of our opportunity, we are not the proprietors of our talents, we 
are not the absolute controllers of our property ; but we are 
merely stewards placed there by God, that out of our strength 
the weakness of others may be uplifted, and out of our abund- 
ance the hunger of others may be appeased. 

There is much more gnawing hunger than even the hunger 
for bread, and that is hunger for righteousness. It is not true 
that the social question is a question of the stomach. It is 
not even a question of wage. It is of human dignity, of 
human liberty, and it is ultimately the great problem of human 
existence, of human solidarity. That is what my religion 
attempts to teach those who walk in its ways. 

We have been trying to apply these truths, of course in a 
small degree, in the uplifting of our nearer kinfolk. We know 
that our own Jewish poor have perhaps no one who can under- 
stand them as the Jews can. We know their souls, for, as it is 
written in the Book when God enjoins upon Israel to be mind- 
ful of the needs of the stranger, " You know the soul of the 
stranger, for strangers you were in a land not your own." The 
Jew has tasted the bitter bread of exile, he has often hungered 
and thirsted, and no one has offered him the bread and held to 
his lips the water that refreshed. Therefore the Jew, knowing 
what he himself had to contend against, understands what the 
Russian Jews are pleading for ; he knows what their souls have 
suffered and how they are warped, he realizes the dangers into 
which they are plunged at once by coming to this land of 
liberty — alas ! so often the land of unrestricted license. 

(696) 



No. 4] ADDRESSES AT THE DINNER 223 

Two hundred fifty- six years ago the governor here in Man- 
hattan was promised by the Jews that no Jew should become a 
charge upon the community. We have remembered that 
pledge, and it accounts for our seeming clannishness. Suppose 
a mother trains two children of her own to be good men and 
good women, does she not do as much for society as if she 
trained two other children not her own? The Jews that have 
the social consecration of their religion are doing service for 
this land and for humanity. The synagogue to-day preaches, if 
that doctrine is preached anywhere, the glad tidings of a 
humanity that will recognize distinctions only as stronger 
appeals to duty; it calls all men children of God, and it will 
cooperate cheerfully with every movement that looks toward 
breaking the shackles of slavery, be it slavery in the brothel, in 
the factory or in the home of luxury. Therefore I come to 
speak for every Jew in this country and the world when I say 
that the synagogue is glad to stand by the church in the great 
work of lifting up humanity and bringing in God's Kingdom on 
earth, that will not come until justice be done everywhere, and 
righteousness be the star that leads men on to their ultimate 
destiny under God's appointment. 

President Lindsay : We shall all agree in placing high on 
the list of social workers the medical missionary. Dr. Grenfell 
of Labrador is our next speaker. 

Dr. Grenfell : I am neither theologian nor philosopher. 
I am a humble member of the medical profession, and I ap- 
proach the subject to-night from the point of view of an indi- 
vidual rather than a leader of a large organization. To me 
there is little difference between religious and social work. As 
I read Christ's words, he says, " All those that are not against 
me are for me." The men or the women who love humanity 
enough to saerifice themselves for the uplift of their fellow-men 
I should class as religious workers. The definitions which have 
served to separate the social worker and the religious worker, 
and to separate one kind of religious worker from another, 
seem to me to relate to the way in which each man receives the 
strength to do his work, rather than to anything else. 

(697) 



224 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

I have been working among deep-sea fishermen, and largely 
at sea, and I" went among them because I wanted to try and 
carry to them that message of love which appealed to me, in a 
practical effort to make their lives better. In the hospital work 
in which I was engaged in London I used to see the surgeon 
triumphing over many difficulties, spending time and skill and 
money. I used to see the nurses giving untold affection to the 
restoration to physical health of numbers of poor folk. When 
I came myself to visit the houses of those people in the east 
end of London, I found that often enough all the good done by 
the worker was almost immediately undone by the same en- 
vironment which had produced the original trouble. I came to 
the conclusion that an ordinary surgeon might do a higher work 
than merely to make the man with a crooked leg walk 
straight. It is comparatively easy in these days to do that. 
The really difficult problem is to make the man with a straight 
leg walk straight. When I found a child that I had learned to 
love in the children's ward going back to a home where selfish- 
ness and lust and vice deprived him of any chance of a sound 
physical condition, I saw that vice and sin and selfishness must 
be cured if the end we were aiming at was to be attained. 

As to the methods of our work, we try to approach a man 
through his body, because we do not know any other way to 
approach him. We started a hospital at sea for the simple 
reason that otherwise an injured man when he came ashore was 
often beyond reach altogether. A simple fracture became a 
compound one. We talked to a man and said that we were 
sorry for him, but did nothing more. To avoid the fatal loss 
of time we sent our hospital out to sea. 

Next I will speak of the liquor question. It was plain to me, 
when I came to live among fishermen, that the dangers of the 
sea were insignificant as compared with the dangers of the 
land. And I will say that to-night — yes, when you are all 
thinking of the present horrible disaster. I have seen more 
children damned and robbed through the saloons than through 
all the icebergs and fogs I have sailed among, and I have been 
at sea twenty-five years. When a man has been drowned at 
sea because he was drunk and you go ashore to his home and 

(698) 



No. 4] ADDRESSES AT THE DINNER 225 

tell his wife she is a widow and the children are fatherless, and 
you are awfully sorry for them, your sorrow is not worth any- 
thing. I have floated on an icy sea for twenty-four years, and 
I have never taken liquor. It is not necessary; one can do 
well without it. Therefore we considered that the next social 
or religious work for our men was to try and knock the liquor 
out. I bought four tons of tobacco in Ostend and went to sea 
with that, and in three months I had a tobacco flag on several 
vessels. The men did not go to the saloons to buy tobacco, 
they went to these clean vessels. It knocked the liquor vessels 
out. 

There is no need of my dilating on the uplift to the soul that 
comes through a sound body. The body degenerated through 
any cause cannot possibly express the soul or give it a fair 
chance, and by the soul I mean the man. To me the man is 
always absolutely different from his body. We consider our 
hospitals and our hospital boats as simply a part of our 
religious and social work. 

I will add but one word. On what basis is one man going 
to uplift another? I think he is going to lift him up on the 
basis of loving him. That was Christ's method, and it seems 
to be the right method. All power must come from faith. 
Love is the power of faith. It must be based on the power 
which Christ came to tell us about, the motive power of the 
world, the love of man for God, and of God for man, and of 
man for his fellow-man. I am glad to-day that the Catholic 
and the Protestant and the Jew and the medical profession can 
join together in feeling that we each have some place in trying 
to interpret to somebody who understands it best through our 
particular channel that divine message. I believe in the King- 
dom of the Master coming from the heart. As has been said, 
the old interpretation of religious organization was, when one 
saw a wounded beggar lying by the roadside, to rush to 
Jerusalem and have a prayer meeting, but now we all go across 
the road and put the wounded man on the donkey. 

President Lindsay : Our next speaker is a social worker 
) who has had the gratifying faculty of interpreting for us the 

(699) 



226 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

social spirit of our times, Professor Edward T. Devine, of 
Columbia University, Editor of The Survey. 

Edward T. Devine, Professor of Social Economy, Colum- 
bia University, and Editor of The Survey : For three days we 
have been walking, groping in the valley of the shadow of 
death. We cannot escape it. We cannot get it out of our 
minds. What happened there on the fog banks, 1 the story of 
which is now slowly creeping up the channel here, is constantly 
in our minds. Since we cannot get rid of it, since in that 
shadow the ordinary events of our lives some way change their 
scale of values and seem relatively unimportant, why should we 
not frankly speak about it? And yet, my friends, as our minds 
turn, whether we will or not, to that great tragedy, titanic in 
fact no less than in name, is it not true that the two things 
which we consider to-night are the things which in a dark hour 
like this retain their significance — religion and the social wel- 
fare? Anticipating an hour like this, religion, in the words of 
the psalmist that have come down to us through the ages, bids 
us say, " Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
death, I will fear no evil." In consideration of the social wel- 
fare, the social spirit easily pictures itself on a ship, a ship on 
which humanity is embarked, and the specific task of social 
work is to keep an eye on the lifeboats, on the riveting of the 
plates, on the messages that come warning us of the icebergs, 
and at last on the courage and the conduct of the individual in 
the hour when his courage meets the supreme test. Does he 
go down to death in sacrifice, if need be, that the weak may 
be saved? 

We have heard much of late of the biological doctrine of 
eugenics. It has been referred to here in applications with 
which I have no quarrel; but there are those injudicious 
apostles of a half-assimilated idea who are teaching us a strange 
philosophy; who are saying to us in the name of biology that 
the strong should ruthlessly trample on the weak; who are 
saying to us that it is so desirable for the race that certain 
qualities should be preserved in humanity that we must see to 

1 The wreck of the Titanic. 
(700) 



No. 4] ADDRESSES AT THE DINNER 2 2? 

it that the matings of the strong are encouraged ; who are say- 
ing, on the other hand, that it is so desirable for humanity to 
eliminate certain qualities from the race that there should be 
voluntary or enforced celibacy on the part of those who have 
those qualities. With these last applications of the doctrine also 
I have no quarrel. 

But there are those who go still further and say that laws for 
the protection of children from the evil consequence of prema- 
ture employment, laws that seek to improve housing conditions, 
laws that seek to prevent infectious diseases, are injurious to 
the race because they are interfering with natural selection. 
There are those who say that, just as in old times war and 
pestilence and famine performed a beneficent function because 
they stamped out the weak and enabled the strong to survive, 
so now we have the slums and child labor and tuberculosis and 
typhoid and industrial accidents, and that these natural succes- 
sors to war and pestilence and famine are performing the same 
beneficent function for society which those former agents of 
natural selection performed. 

Is it not time that religion and social work get together to 
consider this strange philosophy? There are those here to- 
night who have authority to speak on behalf of religion, and 
they have spoken. Speaking quite unofficially for the social 
workers, whose spirit I think I know, I venture to say to those 
who condemn child labor laws on the ground that parents will 
not care for their children unless they can get their wages at 
nine and ten and eleven years of age, who condemn workmen's 
compensation on the ground that it will interfere with the 
beneficent working of natural selection — I say to them, " You 
may be right. It may be that a society that protects the weak 
and puts on the shoulders of the strong the burdens of society, 
will go down. If so, we choose to go down." A society that 
can survive only by trampling out the weak and giving artificial 
encouragement to the strong does not deserve to survive. We 
who have enlisted in these new crusades against tuberculosis, 
against unsanitary houses, against the labor of women more 
than fifty-four hours in a week, against the premature employ- 
ment of children — we mean to see to it that compassion and 
fraternity shall not disappear from the earth. 

(701) 



228 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol.11 

That is the message, if I understand it, of social service. Is 
not that, Rabbi, Monsignor, Bishop, Doctor, the message also 
of religion? I believe that it is. I do not know for what your 
churches and cathedrals and synagogues have been founded and 
kept alive if it be not to see to it that men hear the message to 
do justice and to love mercy. We, too, like the eugenist, would 
have our weak sister, the defective girl, cared for, but we do 
not think that the strong argument in favor of that policy is the 
danger of contaminating by her strain the stream of humanity. 
We do not think it is the protection of society against her 
degeneracy that will move society to act. We think that a 
strong appeal lies in infinite compassion for her as an individual ; 
we think that it is because she is to be protected against criminal 
assault rather than that society is to be protected against her, 
that people will give to her the tender care which she ought to 
have. 

Our ship is not sinking. It will come, we hope, to the port 
where we fain would be. Our last word is not of sacrifice. 
u Thou requirest not sacrifice, else would we give it." Our last 
word is the rescue of the lost. Our last word is of rehabilita- 
tion, of reintegration, of redemption. Redemption is the social 
gospel. 

President Lindsay : Our next speaker is one who has ap- 
pealed in a remarkable way to the strength of young men — Mr. 
John R. Mott, the General Secretary of the World's Student 
Christian Federation, and the Associate General Secretary of 
the International Young Men's Christian Association. 

Mr. Mott : The most critical battlefield is not the slum, 
nor is it the area of social injustice and neglect. Without a 
shadow of doubt, the most critical battlefield of our day is the 
universities. Any ideal or spirit which we wish to have per- 
meate the nation must first dominate these centers of higher 
learning. You recall the German proverb that what you would 
put into the life of a nation, you must put into its schools. No 
movement has ever permanently triumphed which has not at 
one time entered the colleges and universities. These teach 
the teachers ; these preach to the preachers ; these govern the 

(702) 



No. 4] ADDRESSES AT THE DINNER 229 

governors. It is, therefore, not a matter of indifference but of 
most vital concern whether our universities and colleges are fully 
and constantly exposed to social influences, and whether those 
who determine college ideals are dominated by the social 
passion. 

I go further and maintain that the universities and the 
colleges need the social movement. They need it in order to 
be saved. The most subtle dangers of our modern student life 
will not be conquered, in my judgment, without a closer 
relation to the processes of social advance. Some of these 
dangers are the dangers of growing luxury and extravagance, a 
tendency in not a few places to softness and an increasing love 
of ease and pleasure — dangers that are eating into the best life 
of some of our most honored institutions ; dangers likewise of 
snobbishness, more than a remnant of the old town-and-gown 
spirit of the middle ages and of the last century ; dangers from 
the cliques that have broken our college life in these days by a 
sharper cleavage than in any previous generation : dangers of 
the ultra-critical and cynical attitude ; likewise some of the 
most subtle forms of selfishness. These tendencies are far 
more dangerous than the so-called forces of sin and shame. 
We must socialize the colleges for their salvation. 

The colleges need the social movement in order that we may 
have the note of reality sounded out not only within them, but 
through them in the life of church and state. We need tasks 
vast enough to appeal to the imagination of the future leaders ; 
tasks so difficult that they will call out the best energies of the 
minds and hearts of the students ; tasks so absorbing that 
students will forget themselves ; tasks whose tragic responsibili- 
ties will startle students from their theorizing and dreaming 
into reality. We need, therefore, this exposure to the social 
conditions of our time. 

The universities need this exposure and this attitude in order 
also that they may fulfil the highest mission of universities. 
What is that? To train men not simply for personal better- 
ment but for public service. Why are the educated persons 
entitled to stand in high places? Noblesse oblige. They need 
this also to call out their latent possibilities. It moves me 

(703) 



230 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. II 

deeply as I travel among the universities to see there the 
capacities for vicariousness, for heroism, for unselfish achieve- 
ment, dormant, needing to be related to social facts. 

Not only do the universities need the social movement, but 
the social movement needs the universities if it is to achieve its 
principal mission. The movement for the betterment of society 
needs the universities in order that we may have the thinkers 
without whom these problems will not be solved. In what field 
to-day is there so great need of scientific study and investiga- 
tion, of broad and constructive treatment, amid surroundings 
that make for unselfish detachment, as in the realm of social 
difficulties, and where shall we look for this training if we do 
not look to the universities and the colleges ? 

The social movement must look there likewise to find not only 
the thinkers, but the apostles. The church will not rise to her 
social mission, nor will the other great religious forces, unless 
we have this passion for unselfishness and heroic service seizing 
the colleges with greater intensity. 

The social movement must have the colleges also in order 
that we may have entering the various influential walks of life 
men who are dominated by this ideal and this purpose. It is 
an idle dream to talk about solving these questions permanently 
unless we have a larger stream entering politics, medicine, the 
law, the ministry, to say nothing of engineering and the other 
callings that bring leaders near the laboring men. Men must 
bring to bear in the relationships of these professions the prin- 
ciples and practises of pure religion. 

This lends significance to the Christian Student Movement, 
which is expanding in our universities and colleges. It is in a 
position to render a large service in these ways because of its 
numbers and personnel. It now counts nearly 150,000 students 
and professors throughout the world, mostly young men and 
young women in the vision-forming period of life, responsive 
ever to the highest ideals, showing their ability to work together 
in a mighty movement. We can expect much from it, because 
of the esprit de corps that comes from linking together the future 
leaders of countries such as this. We may expect much from 
it, because it has a method and plan of work that make possible 

(704) 



No. 4] ADDRESSES AT THE DINNER 23 I 

the bringing to bear of its ideals and spirit upon all of the 
influential professions at their source. We may expect much 
from it, because it has demonstrated its ability in the form of 
foreign missions to wage a triumphant propaganda. If it has 
been able to recruit six thousand students from the universities 
of North America and Great Britain within twenty-five years, 
who have been sent out to come to close grapple with the social 
problems of the non-Christian world, it is able to do much 
larger things in our home countries. We are not surprised, 
therefore, to find this movement responsive to the ideals of 
organizations such as that under whose auspices we are assem- 
bled to-night. 

What is the movement doing in the colleges? Under its 
auspices are being given addresses by labor leaders and repre- 
sentatives of every class, bringing vividly before the studying 
youth in our generation the facts and forces that make for the 
betterment of society. It goes deeper than that because it sees 
we need not only knowledge, but realization in promoting the 
scientific study of these subjects. Thousands of students are 
studying the social facts through such books as Misery and its 
Causes, by Dr. Devine, and Social Degradation and Social 
Reclamation, by Malcolm Spencer of London. Hundreds of 
these associations are also undertaking the study of their own 
communities, leading the students before they enter the influ- 
ential walks of life to learn how they may face these questions 
in a sane, practical and helpful way. Besides this — and this is 
important — this movement is leading the students to stand in 
front of the social facts and ask themselves, How far are we 
students responsible for these facts and what are we doing to 
change these facts? 

The place to bring power to bear is where it can be most 
wisely and advantageously applied. Surely that place is the 
colleges. But this movement comes nearer than that. It seeks 
to socialize the colleges. By its democratic spirit, drawing into 
its membership the members of all classes and organizations, 
the rich and the poor, men holding different views on religious 
questions, fusing them together in a solid brotherhood, it is 
making for the socializing of the colleges. It is also doing so in 

(705) 



232 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK [Vol. I 

the grappling with certain of the evils. I think one of the finest 
things being done now is the grappling with the social evil as it 
is eating like a cancer into the best life of some colleges where 
you would least expect it. I want to resent bitterly charges that 
we sometimes hear about the moral condition of our colleges. 
I consider them among the most moral communities we have, 
and yet I should be superficial if I did not recognize cancer 
where I know it is working. This movement is to be recom- 
mended for seeking in a quiet way to socialize the colleges in 
this sense. 

The movement is doing still more in some ways by enlisting 
not hundreds, but thousands, of undergraduates in social service 
in the college communities. You will find nearly two hundred 
undergraduates in Yale, engaged in such activities ; and in 
Harvard one year three hundred sixty-seven men gave in their 
names as desirous of engaging in some form of social service. 
I could take you to Princeton, which is not so favorably situated 
for these activities, and yet show you groups of men going out 
for social service. Small colleges, like Williams and Amherst, 
are conducting boys' clubs in nearby places. These are but 
typical of how the undergraduates are being related to the 
social needs in their diverse aspects. We are seeking to impress 
upon the men as they graduate the great message of the colleges, 
that they shall go out as statesmen and and lawyers and doctors 
and editors and authors and engineers, sons of the wealthy, 
sons of the poor, to make their influence tell on these great 
social questions. 

A few days ago I spoke in the House of Commons to a 
company of members of Parliament, and we had a short dis- 
cussion. A member from Scotland said, " We in Parliament 
now have become conscious of the power of this Christian 
Student Movement." If he could say that now in the infancy 
of this movement, what can we say a few years hence when its 
network of unselfishness and of helpfulness has been spread 
more intimately, not only over the undergraduates, but through 
them over the graduates who are going out to dominate society 
and lead the forces which make possible the solution of these 
problems ? You remember the morning when you read in the 

(706) 



No. 4 ] ADDRESSES AT THE DINNER 



233 



paper that the 203-Meter-Hill fortress had been captured. It 
did not require you to be a military strategist to predict that it 
would be only a short time before the great citadel of Port 
Arthur must fall. I remind you that the universities and col- 
leges are the 203-Meter-Hill fortress of the nations. 

(707) 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE SPRING MEETING OF THE 

ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE HELD IN 

NEW YORK, APRIL 18 AND 19, 19 12 

THE spring meeting of the Academy of Political Science 
held in New York on April 18 and 19, 191 2, dealt with 
Organization for Social Work. Three sessions were held 
at Earl Hall, Columbia University. The program was as follows : 

FIRST SESSION 
Thursday morning, April 18 

Topic 
Greater New York's Social Needs 
Charitable Relief 

W. Frank Persons 
Housing Needs 

Lawrence Veiller 
Protection of Factory Workers 

George M. Price 
Child Labor in the Tenements and Home Work for Women 

Mrs. Florence Kelley 
Budgetary Provision for Social Needs 

William H. Allen 
Education of Mothers and the Saving of Babies 

Philip Van Ingen 
Discussion by James Jenkins, Jr. 

SECOND SESSION 
Thursday afternoon, April 18 

Topic 

Social Surveys 

The Spread of the Survey Idea. 

Paul U. Kellogg 

(708) 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE SPRING MEETING 235 

The Survey of a Typical American City 

Shelby M. Harrison 
A Sanitary and Health Survey 

George T. Palmer 
The Relation of a District Neighborhood Survey to Social 
Needs 

Miss Pauline Goldmark 
Discussion by Professor Robert Emmet Chaddock 

FOURTH SESSION 
Friday morning, April 19 

Topic 
NATIONAL SOCIAL NEEDS 

Recreation and Youth 

Luther H. Gulick 
Next Steps in the Child-Labor Campaign 

Owen R. Lovejoy 
Regulation of Public Amusements 

Mrs. Belle Lindner Lsraels 
Commercialized Vice 

George J. Kneeland 
Discussion by Rev. Washington Gladden, Professor Henry R. 
Seager and Dr. Hastings H. Hart 

Robert W. deForest presided at the first session, Paul U. 
Kellogg at the second session and Professor Samuel McCune 
Lindsay at the fourth session. 



CONFERENCE DINNER 
The semi-annual dinner was held at the Hotel Astor on 
Thursday evening, April 18, President Samuel McCune Lindsay 
presiding. 

The guests of honor were Monsignor Mooney, personal rep- 
resentative of Cardinal Farley ; Rt. Rev. Eugene Russell Hen- 
drix, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church South ; Rabbi 

(709) 



236 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK 

Emil G. Hirsch, Professor of Rabbinical Literature and Phil- 
osophy, University of Chicago ; Dr. Wilfred T. Grehfell of 
Labrador ; Mr. John R. Mott, General Secretary of the World's 
Student Federation, and Professor Edward T. Devine of Co- 
lumbia University. 

(710) 



LB D '12 



THE POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY 

The Quarterly, published for the Academy, is under the edi- 
torial control of the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia 
University, and is devoted to the historical, statistical and com- 
parative study of politics, economics and public law. 

Its list of contributors includes university and college 
teachers, politicians, lawyers, journalists and business men in all 
parts of the United States, and European professors and pub- 
licists. It follows the most important movements of foreign 
politics but devotes chief attention to questions of present in- 
terest in the United States. On such questions its attitude is 
nonpartisan. Every article is signed; and every article, includ- 
ing those of the editors, expresses simply the personal view 
of the writer. Each issue contains careful book reviews by 
specialists, and in March and September large numbers of recent 
publications are characterized in brief book notes. In June 
-~ J December is printed a valuable record of political 
events throughout the world. 

Communications in reference to articles, book reviews 
and exchanges should be addressed to the managing editor, 
Professor Munroe Smith, Columbia University, New York 
City. Intending contributors are requested to retain copies of 
articles submitted, as the editors disclaim responsibility for the 
safety of manuscripts. If accompanied by stamps, articles not 
found available will be returned. Members of the Academy 
receive the Political Science Quarterly without further payment. 



THE ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 



IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 



President 

Samuel McCune Lindsay 

Vice-Presidents 

Albert Shaw 

Paul M. Warburg 

Secretary 

Henry Raymond Mussey 

Treasurer 

George A. Plimpton 

Assistant to the President 

Emma S. Lake 

Editor of the Political Science Quarterly 

Munroe Smith 

. Editor of Proceedings of the Academy 

Henry Raymond Mussey 



Trustees 
Robert Erskine Ely 
Frank J. Goodnow 
A. Barton Hepburn 
Thomas W. Lamont 
William R. Shepherd 
Henry R. Seager 
Edwin R. A. Seligman 
Munroe Smith . 
Frank A. Vanderlip 

Advisory Council 
Nicholas Murray Butler 
J. Pierpont Morgan 
Elihu Root 
Francis Lynde Stetson 



The Academy of Political Science, founded in 1880, is com- 
posed of men and women interested in political, economic and 
social questions. The annual dues are $5. Members re- 
ceive without further payment the four issues of the Political 
Science Quarterly and the four issues of the Proceedings, and are 
entitled to free admission to all meetings, lectures and receptions 
under the auspices of the Academy. Two regular meetings are 
held each year, in April and November. 

The Spring meeting of the Academy held on April 18 and 
19 considered the topic, Organization for Social Work. The 
Proceedings are published in full in this number. 

Communications regarding the Academy should be 
addressed to The Secretary of the Academy of Polit- 
ical Science, Columbia University. 



